Chattanooga FF: Daughter of the Sun: Getting to Malick

MOVIE INFO:

A 12-year-old girl lives life on the run alongside her father who has Tourette Syndrome. Desperately seeking a normal family life, she befriends a group of outcasts who want to harness a volatile supernatural power her father is hiding.

REVIEW:

Daughter of the Sun (2023) — Indiecan Entertainment/Buffalo 8

Daughter of the Sun , a fantasy drama about a daughter and her Tourette Syndrome suffering father with mysterious powers, tries to be a little of everything cinematically.

The first third it’s a mighty fine drama about an afflicted parent, Sonny (the director, Ryan Ward) and his daughter, Hildie (Nyah Perkin). Sun traces Sonny’s attempt to keep a job because of the unintended swearing and emotional outburst that Tourette’s causes, his vigils to keep both of them out of poverty, to live a life where they’re not constantly moving.

The relationship between father and daughter is nicely delineated, full of nice little touches that show their strong bonds and understandings: bedtime readings from S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders, questions from Hildie honestly answered (with the exception of those about Sonny and his ex-wife), just certain caring looks that show love, little protections for each other’s feelings and soul.

Ward as a director shows a lot to be admired. His handling of light and color is reminiscent of Terence Malick. There are auras but also shadows and sunshine. It’s all layered with an emotional quality that draws the eye in a way that the mind can’t help to follow. Unlike Malick, it’s never overdone and mostly feels honest, at least that special first third is a better Malick than Malick.

Than Ward starts getting symbolic, which is fine as long as it’s a representation of inner emotional states. The father seems to have the ability to harness sunlight and cast it out in vibrant ways to the world. They’re is the implication that Sonny is a god that can channel time and space. His full abilities are never shown because the whole production is too low budget to allow it. Hildie seems to have inherited some of his powers too. Whenever she gets overly emotional she can cause the earth to rumble. As metaphors for communion and teenage angst they are wonderfully apt and poetic. It just breaks the drama when it tries to make the world believe it.

The two eventually come upon a community of outcasts- essentially disabled in the five senses. And for a moment, there is a sort of heaven being defined. As metaphors for Sonny’s and Hildie’s inner selves it was all perfectly nice, slightly sweet and charming. Beyond that, the images break, subtlety goes out the window, and with that, the entire movie starts to unravel, becomes a bad Stephen King novel. Things turn sinister and dark. The community exploits, harms them.

Other reviewers liking this turn of events were impressed with this twist. I just wasn’t buying it. Daughter of the Sun becomes just another of the new horror and fantasy that tries to shake the genre, but ends up betraying itself. Sometimes the best way to go big is to go small. It’s something Malick never learned and the new breed of horror and fantasy directors can’t seem to see.