By David Dent
This beautifully crafted fable tips its creative hat to the nitrate shadowed films of Guy Maddin and sometimes appears like a low-budget David Eggers movie.
The creation of co-director Jake Kuhn and Noah Stratton-Twine (who also wrote the film’s sumptuous score), Jack Redmayne plays Jim Baitte, a movie sound guy whose attempts to make reliable field recordings for a forthcoming feature are failing to impress producers Teddie (Dashiell John Blanchett Upton) and Bill (Jason Hogan). Director P.W. Griffin (Os Leanse) wants to go in a different direction, namely a voiceover on the soundtrack. Impressed with the sound of a girl he heard while he was in a diner in Pincer Point, he tasks Jim to track her down and record her voice.
Jim, who in an earlier scene mysteriously received a bite from a crab at his London flat, travels to Pincer Point and, via the rather odd locals, finds out that the voice in question belongs to Marina Hurley (Alyth Ross) and, courtesy of her brother Hollis (Stratton-Twine) that she is missing. Jim is drawn into a mystery in which he becomes a focus, including talking crabs and a ghost frigate, ‘The Bucken Rider’ and its otherworldly master, Captain Telson.
TPaPP looks amazing. Filmed in academy ratio in luminous black and white, with painted backdrops, models and other technical sleights of hand (no AI was involved, the filmmakers emphatically announce) although filmed in Suffolk it conjures up a distinctly other worldly feel. It’s a freewheeling piece, largely improvised, and its Mighty Boosh style humour won’t be for everyone; there’s also more than a slight borrow from the ‘Clem Fandango’ recording scenes from Toast of London. But if quirky characters (Redmayne is particularly appealing in a scatty way), a shaggy dog narrative and a sense of anarchic fun are your thing, you’ll find a lot to like here. “It was supposed to be a horror,” said Stratton-Twine in interview, “but when we saw it come together we realized it was a comedy.” The dedication to Roger Corman at the end of the movie is spot on; as well as the aforementioned crabs, there’s a Cormanesque sense of getting the thing done with enthusiasm and meagre resources. A sequel is already planned.
Bloody Flicks 