Two roomies score a suspiciously cheap apartment in Manhattan, but after a first night of disturbed sleep the nightmare never ends ...
Strange shoe-string budget production, written by two of the actors. It's well edited and paced, cinematography pretty rough, probably too much dialogue, but the score has a nice synth vibe here and there, and the sensibility is reminiscent of pervie '70s stuff, from the era when New York was a nutters' paradise.
The shape of it is intriguing, with three overlapping delusions fuelled by pharamceuticals. I say three, because there are three principal characters, each of whom has gone off the deep end in her own way, but the delusions are inseparable from each other.
The intro makes a point of figures and faces in the lofty architecture overseeing the madness that's about to break out below, and there's a sense of a demiurge in charge of an evil world, personified by the media characters of those involved in the Jeffrey Epstein affair. In the climax, which involves a protective magic crystal, there's an insert of what looks like Epstein's face, tying him in with an occult force at work. Reviews emphasizing the reality of that affair are missing the point entirely.
The performances are energetic but patchy, failing to give meaning in any subtle way - that's probably down to a naive reliance on dialogue and lack of experience in the direction and acting. Mind you, the mental breakdown of the Jewish girl is worryingly authentic. The sex scenes have a certain JNSQ - or maybe they're just porn. There is humour in the air, but the only time I got a sniff of it was when the boyfriend is dragged along to witness the aftermath.
In the end the story didn't seem coherent to me, either pychologically or emotionally, but still an engaging mystery of why we insist on mysteries.
