EMAV Film Review: Brandon Christensen’s 'Z' Offers Suburban Suspense

Las Vegas-based filmmaker Brandon Christensen’s first feature, 2017’s “Still/Born,” was about a mother dealing with a malevolent entity out to get her newborn child. At first glance, it seems like Christensen has just moved on to the next creepy-kid age bracket with his new feature, “Z,” but “Z” effectively shifts focus from its familiar initial set-up to a deeper examination of generational guilt. The theme from “Still/Born” that “Z” most strongly picks up on is the challenge and strain of motherhood, and Christensen dedicates the movie to his wife Alissa, the mother of his children.

Keegan Connor Tracy is excellent as Elizabeth Parsons, the mother whose life is thrown into chaos when her eight-year-old son Josh (Jett Klyne) starts playing with an imaginary friend he calls Z. As the movie begins, Josh is a happy, energetic kid who carpools to school with his best friend and loves his parents. But once Z shows up, Josh becomes sullen, withdrawn and prone to angry outbursts. He attributes all of his bad behavior to Z, and soon escalates from name-calling to shocking acts of violence. Elizabeth becomes convinced that Z is an actual sinister presence in their home, and not just a product of Josh’s overactive imagination.

Keegan Connor Tracy is 'Elizabeth Parsons' in "Z".

That’s all pretty standard horror-movie stuff, although Christensen (who co-wrote the screenplay with frequent collaborator Colin Minihan) executes it effectively, and Klyne gives Josh the right amount of unsettling emotional distance. The movie really belongs to Tracy, a veteran TV actor who rarely gets to play leading roles. Even in the more predictable early part of the movie, Tracy makes Elizabeth’s parental distress feel urgent and real, especially as she’s largely dismissed and patronized by her husband Kevin (Sean Rogerson), in another echo of “Still/Born.”

Tracy really gets to shine in the film’s final third, when the focus of the danger shifts from Josh to Elizabeth, and Christensen deviates from the creepy-kid horror formula. Another veteran character actor, Stephen McHattie, makes the most of his handful of scenes as a therapist who treats Josh but also knows more about Elizabeth’s past than he lets on. Some of the twists and turns of the plot don’t make a ton of sense, but they all have a strong thematic resonance.

Jett Klyne in "Z".

Shooting, as he did with “Still/Born,” in his native Canada, Christensen captures the bland menace of seemingly placid suburbia, where the wholesome nuclear family hides dark secrets. Christensen mostly makes impressive use of his limited resources, although there are a few unconvincing special-effects sequences, and Z himself is scarier as an unseen presence than in the few brief glimpses of him onscreen. As he did on “Still/Born,” Christensen proves that he can generate suspense and dread in a handful of locations (mostly deceptively cozy family houses).

Between “Still/Born” and “Z” (which made the rounds of horror film festivals, including Sin City Horror Fest, last year), Christensen has established himself as a rising indie-horror star, and specific moments in “Z” recall the early work of new horror auteurs like Ari Aster (“Hereditary”) and Mike Flanagan (“Oculus”). “Z” is a step up from “Still/Born,” technically and artistically, and there’s every reason to think that Christensen will continue to develop as a filmmaker with future work. He’s kept Vegas as his home base even as his career has taken off; maybe next time he’ll get to direct a feature film here, too.

Z is available May 7 on Shudder.

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EMAV Film Review: The Dam Short Film Festival displays a diversity of work

The 16th Annual Dam Short Film Festival. Photo by Tsvetelina Stefanova. 2020.

There were quite a few administrative changes behind the scenes before this year’s Dam Short Film Festival, but the result for film-goers was entirely seamless, reflected mainly in the more organized process for getting in and out of Boulder City’s historic Boulder Theatre (especially during the most crowded screenings). But little changes are important, and the leadership team at DSFF (including newly promoted executive director Tsvetelina Stefanova and returning co-founder Lee Lanier) proved that they’ve effectively positioned the still-growing festival (the largest in Nevada) for a strong future.

Logistics aside, this year’s 16th annual DSFF was also another wonderful showcase for the art of the short film, with many of the festival’s signature programs, including two separate spotlights on Nevada films. The winner of the festival’s Railroad Pass Best Nevada Filmmaker award was the documentary “Rainshadow,” Kari Barber’s film about a struggling Reno charter high school that focuses on art education. Although a little long at 37 minutes, “Rainshadow” is a good example of the kind of heartstring-tugging film that the DSFF audience (heavily skewed toward seniors) likes to award. It can be sentimental at times, but it also tells an important story with social relevance, and showcases the personalities of its subjects as much as the social commentary.

“Rainshadow” was part of the Nevada documentary program that opened the festival, and there was a separate program for Nevada narrative films that, as usual, proved to be one of the most popular. Brothers Mike and Jerry Thompson, longtime Vegas film fixtures, had three films in the festival, and their best was the offbeat supernatural comedy “Ghosts Don’t Cry” in the Nevada narrative program. The Thompsons’ amusing micro-short “A Cactus Story” played in one of the packed comedy programs, and their somewhat muddled horror-comedy short “Six Geese a Slaying” (part of the forthcoming “12 Deaths of Christmas” anthology that played in rough form at Sin City Horror Fest last year) played in the Underground program.

"Rainshadow"

There were other strong Nevada films outside the Nevada blocks, including Roberto Raad’s manic comedy “Alternative Therapy,” about a psychologist who gets a little too chummy with his patients, which played in the more adult-oriented of the two comedy programs (it also played at 2019’s Las Vegas Film Festival). Music videos from local artists Sabriel (“Dishes”) and Sonia Barcelona (“Violent Water”) played in the music video program, both demonstrating creative visions from the filmmakers in bringing the music to life. Megan Roe’s take on “Dishes” is a colorful explosion of stop-motion animation surrounding the singer, and Danny Chandia’s gorgeous clip for “Violent Water” pays tribute to the work of silent-movie master Georges Méliès, using minimal resources to create an immersive underwater wonderland (it deservedly won the award for Best Music Video).

“Maradona’s Legs”

Stefanova has talked a lot recently about how DSFF programs to the tastes of its audience, and some programs lean too heavily toward treacly, heavy-handed moral lessons. Those kinds of heartwarming stories can be told well, though, as I was reminded during one international-film program mostly filled with clumsy, didactic stories highlighting social injustice. Amid these was Firas Khoury’s “Maradona’s Legs,” a sweet story about two Palestinian brothers in 1990 trying to find one last sticker to complete their book of World Cup soccer players. In grounding the story in specific details (the sibling relationship, soccer fandom) and leaving the larger political landscape as background detail, Khoury creates an affecting story that reaches the audience much more directly than a manipulative lecture.

"Boo"

Programming this festival requires a delicate balance, and Stefanova, Lanier and the other staffers do a great job of providing diverse content for a diverse crowd. The Underground program, designed to showcase films too daring for the rest of the festival, featured Aiden Brezonick’s hilariously perverse “Jeff Drives You,” which ends up involving a man having sex with a self-aware self-driving car, along with the arch social commentary of Ilja Rautsi’s “Helsinki Mansplaining Massacre,” among other transgressive fare. The horror program, which has been uneven in past years, was spectacular from start to finish, with highlights ranging from the clever twist of Rakefet Abergel’s “Boo” (which had also played at Sin City Horror Fest), to Sarah Gurfield’s strangely romantic horror-comedy “Boy Eats Girl: A Zombie Love Story,” to the gross-out comedy of David Bornstein’s “Unholy ’Mole.”

"Demand Curve"

The festival also made room for a retrospective on the work of renowned experimental art-music collective The Residents, featuring band “associate” Homer Flynn (band members are all anonymous, and Flynn slipped up a few times in the Q&A, referring to “we” instead of “they”). More than anything else, the Residents program proved that DSFF organizers are still willing to occasionally confound the audience. They balanced that by doubling down on comedy, expanding it into two blocks, since comedy is always DSFF’s most successful program. At least this year’s audience award winner for comedy, Austin and Meredith Bragg’s “Demand Curve,” about an economics professor schooling his own kidnappers, was smart and creative, instead of lowbrow and obvious, as the comedy winners often are. As the festival programs to the audience, maybe the audience’s taste is improving a little.

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EMAV Film Review: Las Vegas Jewish Film Festival bears witness to history

Moment from 'Live to Bear Witness' by filmmaker and LVJFF festival director Joshua Abbey.

Although education has always been a big part of the mission of the Las Vegas Jewish Film Festival, in recent years the event has increased its focus on informative documentary content, in some cases at the expense of art. The lineup for this year’s 19th edition included only one narrative feature film (Isaac Cherem’s “Leona,” from Mexico) along with a program of documentaries highlighting important people and events from Jewish culture and history. Those documentaries were generally enlightening, with varying levels of cinematic quality, and they serve the festival’s mission of community outreach, even if they aren’t always fascinating films.

Israeli director Dani Menkin came to the festival with two documentaries, and his film “Picture of His Life,” about wildlife photographer Amos Nachoum, was the most visually striking documentary film in the festival, following Nachoum in his efforts to capture a photograph of a polar bear swimming in the wild, the culmination of his long career getting close to dangerous animals in order to preserve gorgeous images of them. Fittingly for a movie about an artist with an impeccable visual sense, “Picture of His Life” is full of striking images of the natural world, and Menkin and co-director Yonatan Nir keep all of their interview subjects (aside from Nachoum and the people with him on his expedition) offscreen, pairing their voices with more of the film’s stunning imagery.

It was interesting to learn about the lives of foreign correspondent Ruth Gruber (in “Ahead of Time”) and civil rights leader Rabbi Joachim Prinz (in “I Shall Not Be Silent”), but those documentaries were both the standard talking-heads-and-archival-footage productions that are often only slightly more engaging than reading a Wikipedia entry (and both have been available for several years already). Looking backward was more successful in the screening of landmark Jewish LGBT documentary “Trembling Before G-d,” which played at the very first Las Vegas Jewish Film Festival in 2001. Director Sandi DuBowski returned to the festival after visiting for the original screening, offering an update on his film’s subjects and a preview of his upcoming new documentary “Rabbi” (about an Israeli drag queen/rabbi). “Trembling” is still powerful and stirring, even with all the progress that has been made toward tolerance within the Orthodox Jewish community since it was first released.

Forbidden romantic relationships in the Jewish faith were also the subject of “Leona,” which played in a lavish luxury theater at Maya Cinemas in North Las Vegas, a new venue for the festival this year (screenings were also held at the Adelson Educational Campus, the Windmill Library, Brenden Theaters at the Palms and the Century South Point). Isaac Cherem’s film focuses on the close-knit Mexico City community of Syrian Jews, who live an insular existence, refusing to allow anyone into their faith via conversion, and shunning anyone from the community who marries outside the very specific faith (even to Jews from other sects). Co-writer Naian González Norvind plays Ariela, a young woman who’s already testing the conservative community’s boundaries with her career as an artist, and becomes further alienated from her family and friends when she starts dating a non-Jewish man.

A lot of “Leona”’s plot beats are familiar from other star-crossed-lovers stories, but Cherem and Norvind add extra dimensions by depicting the movie’s unique cultural context, and Norvind’s lead performance is sensitive and layered. Rather than demonizing everything about Ariela’s community and idealizing her relationship with Ivan (Christian Vazquez), the movie portrays both with complexity, ending on an ambiguous note that doesn’t provide easy answers. It’s the kind of challenging artistic production that LVJFF should program more of, and it’s just as educational as the blander documentaries on the festival bill (especially thanks to the post-screening context provided by local Rabbi Felipe Goodman, a Mexico City native).

The festival always draws heavily from the Vegas Jewish community for support, and the closing world premiere screening of locally produced documentary shorts “A Promise to Our Fathers” and “Live to Bear Witness” brought out that community in full force, completely filling the large auditorium at the Adelson Educational Campus. Produced by Vegas media veteran Gene Greenberg, “A Promise to Our Fathers” tells the story of Greenberg’s parents, Holocaust survivors who emigrated from Poland to the United States, as well as the father of Greenberg’s childhood friend Larry Pollard, a World War II veteran who’s involved in education about the Holocaust. It’s a slickly produced tribute to both men’s families, with affecting firsthand accounts of how wartime experiences shaped Greenberg’s and Pollard’s parents, and in turn shaped the two men themselves.

LVJFF director Joshua Abbey directed “Live to Bear Witness” himself, and like his documentary from last year’s festival, “Balabustas” (about influential local Jewish women), it’s more valuable as community-building than as cinema. It’s a little more polished than Abbey’s previous film, and it takes on a heavier subject, with local Holocaust survivors asking questions of local high school and college students, gauging the younger generation’s knowledge and reactions. Both “A Promise to Our Fathers” and “Live to Bear Witness” will be valuable classroom tools, and if LVJFF is going to be primarily devoted to education, these projects show the festival accomplishing that agenda effectively.

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