Braid

Watch on Amazon Prime. This movie is a treat to watch. I'm not really sure what I was looking at sometimes, or exactly what was happening. But I think that is the intent of the creator and I was with her all the way. Know this: the cinematography is really good. Wonderful. There are plenty of creative uses of the camera and setting. The use of color filters added to the movie and I think sets this apart from conventional psycho-thrillers. The story is frank and disturbing and hard to follow. The acting is solid and for the most part honest. The set pieces are beautifully designed. The three women sleeping in the bathtub among mirror balls is a good example. The little girl slumber party. The foot-worshipping conductor. The dark hall of doors. You'll like it. Yes you will. And I think it's gutsy not to offer an explanation of what is "really" happening. We have a solid idea going in: two women need money and decide to exploit a crazy friends insanity to get it. From there you fall into the whole thing. I like movies just like this one. I like creativity and artistic flair. I like brazen, non-linear filmmaking. I like movies with dangerous, sexy, damaged people. I like a heady mix of erotic attraction and repulsion. The plot is not messy or nonsensical. Instead, I see it as a story told from deep in the minds of the participants. But which one and when is not clear all the time. I liked it and I think you will, too.

Petula and Tilda, two small time drug dealers, go on the run and decide to stop off at the isolated estate of their childhood friend, Daphne. Daphne's seclusion has turned her into a dangerous psychotic who insists on playing childish games all day long and, if Petula and Tilda don't want to get caught, they'll have to play along.

More of an exercise in style and shock over substance, Braid is a daring and often confounding indie horror/thriller. Madeline Brewer steals the entire film as Daphne, finding just the right balance between terror, camp, and pathos. It's an excellent performance and Braid is worth seeing for that alone.

The cinematography is gorgeous and the filmmakers use the crumbling mansion location to great effect. Pacing never drags much either which is surprising given that the majority of the film is a chamber piece between three characters and it's mostly confined to one location. In that sense, it feels much more like some long lost regional horror relic from the 70's, using whatever it has available to tell its story.

The script could stand to be tighter and it leaves us with maybe a few too many unanswered questions, but the experience of Braid as a whole is well worth your time.

Two of the thirteen reviews so far have a ten star rating. I'll let you guess how many other reviews those two people wrote. None! There is no chance in hell that somebody not involved in this movie would score it a perfect score, or maybe if you're very easily pleased and have no clue about other real gems. Braid starts promising, with good filming shots so I can't blame the director for that, but the more the movie advances the lesser the quality. It's just badly written, not interesting at all, and the final twenty minutes I just lost all interest as it became just a mess. Don't waste your time on this boring story.

This is my second viewing of the film. I will simply say that there are a mountain of highly negative reviews here, which inspired me to comment. If "Braid" (now titled as "Dying to Play") ain't your cup of brew, so be it. Feel free to dislike it. But to simply say "it made no sense" or to point out multiple plot holes is to lazily ignore what is going on.

A single example: what might appear to be bad film-making (a bloody, scarred knee appearing in the next frame as totally healed), is in service of the larger purpose at work here: the blurring of reality, role-playing and the consequences of resigning oneself to a world of fantasy.

As for the "point" of this film: This really is a movie where the camera controls the plot. The jumpy, cinematic shots control the text, and do so in a manner that is much more careful than its seemingly haphazard style would suggest. After all, this is on its face a movie about a game that three girls created as children- here, repeated as adults. The point, then, concerns the creation of a fantasy world (whether through drugs, the Game, acting, wealth etc.) and the repetition and phantasmagoric dysfunction that this bubble world of safety ends up creating. Put another way, the Fellini, Lynch, Argento touches serve a narrative that is purposefully disjointed and fragmented: each of the primary characters plays "the Game;" but only one of them really attempts to make it out . . . Again and again in almost circular fashion.

While this movie certainly has its flaws, it is quite ambitious. I do think it is the sort of film that fares better on a second viewing.

Let me say first, that I like things like this...I won't regurgitate the plot...there's enough of that here in the other reviews. What makes this a satisfying watch is that you're really not sure what's going on half the time, why characters do the things they do...at times it appears as one happy family, at other times a bit combative...who's playing who and who has the upper hand ? What is real and what is playing the game ? Simple things can appear as plot holes...or not, given the perspective that can change at a moment's notice. It all comes together at the end, but it's a trippy ride there.