MOVIE INFO:
Two filmmakers set out on an adventure into a creepy old mall, only to find themselves lost in an increasingly claustrophobic maze of hallways, liminal spaces, stairwells and backrooms in this comedic found footage horror film.
REVIEW:
Mall corridors can be spooky places if you are getting lost in them. I have anxiety dreams about them, but in Noclip, an example of liminal horror, getting lost and coming to the same place over and over again, is neither spooky nor horrifying, it’s just dumb ass. The movie is just a little over an hour, but it feels like a hundred because of the aimless wandering and stupid wondering that could have been solved simply by asking mall personnel for directions.
The movie was shot with an iPhone by two millennial idiots, Gavin Charles and Alex Conn, so high and dumb that they make Bill and Ted look like geniuses. To add to the pretentiousness, the last 30 minutes are coated with a psychedelic filter. Drop a little acid, smoke some weed and it might seem interesting. For the sober, streaming this nonsense and pausing it to see the time left, brings out the true horror of this movie passing slower than you think in a way that can never be superseded.
The two best friends Irl do search for liminal spaces and post their experiences on popular liminal spaces forums. Here, they’re are looking for a haunted back room of the mall and never finding it. They just meet lock door after lock door, expecting some Area 51 revelation. It’s all hype and no proof and gets annoying pretty quickly.
Some reviews have suggested that the two are making a parody film about horror hipsters trying to fit in. That’s a justification that gives Charles and Conn too much credit. Saying this is another liminal space over and over again does not make unseen spaces neither liminal nor spacey. Nor does it make it a comedy. This is simply two bored stoners picking up a camera to pas the time. The Con(n) is that some decent film festivals see this as art.
Noclip needs a lot of things that Charles and Conn can never provide: characters, plot, even a little bickering between the dudes that would have added tension and drama. Noclip is all surface and no depth.
NoClip gets a 2.5/5 or a C. It’s being shown as a part of the Chattanooga Film Festival that runs virtually from June 21-28.
CREDITS:
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