Slapface
**”Slapface” is available to watch at Cinequest from March 21-March 30. You can purchase a virtual ticket to watch it here.
After watching Jeremiah Kipp’s “Slapface,” I went back to watch the short film it was based on. It’s always fascinating to see how filmmakers approach expanding a basic idea into a longer narrative, and in doing so here, Kipp has maintained the heart of what the short film was, but expanded it successfully into an 85-minute narrative that is as unsettling as it is tragic. The title refers to something Lucas (August Maturo) and Tom (Mike Manning) do together. Is it a form of playfighting? Or abuse? The way this idea is given depth in the transition from the short film to the feature is part of why “Slapface” succeeds so well in its feature-length form.
Lucas and Tom are brothers, whose parents died some time ago. Now, it is just them, and Tom is having a hard time being the father figure that Lucas requires, often spending his time at the local bar, and hitting on women like Anna (Libe Barer). This leaves Lucas on his own quite a bit, and he often finds himself getting in trouble; the local sheriff, John Thurston (Dan Hedaya), is worried about the situation, and tells Tom that he’s running out of free passes before Child Services is brought in. Lucas is picked on by some local girls, but he has a connection with Moriah (Mirabelle Lee). One day, the girls dare Lucas to go into an abandoned building, and he makes a game of it for them, until he sees something truly terrifying. The Monster (Lukas Hassel, who played the role in the short film, as well), as it’s credited, is a grotesque humanoid being in ratty clothes, but doesn’t immediately seem to want to harm Lucas. It does harm, however, and as the film progresses, it gets closer and closer to harming that which Lucas holds dearest.
There’s something about the visual landscape of “Slapface”- both the short and the feature- that I just adore. There’s a lot of walking (and running) in the woods, but not a forest with a lot of green, but where the trees and bare and the trunks are tall, allowing the sun to come through. Shot by Dominick Sivilli, the feature takes the visual ideas of the short and creates something beautiful in its starkness, but also terrifying. It’s an ideal horror movie setting, even though some of the scariest moments of the movie take place in homes or offices. The last feature I saw of Kipp’s was “Black Lake,” where he adopted a found-footage style; here, he seems to be harkening back to the Universal monster movies of “The Wolf Man” and “Frankenstein,” but with a creature that is right out of the Brothers Grimm. Add production design by Kat VanCleave and a suspenseful score by Barry J. Neely, and this is a modern version of the classical monster movie done right.
What lures us into “Slapface” isn’t the promise of monsters and violence and gore, however, but the struggles of Lucas and Tom to build a life where they can take care of one another in a healthy manner. At a certain point, these two are going to have to realize they just cannot reset their emotional equilibrium through a session of slapface, and have to take the world on its own terms. Unfortunately, by the end, they may have reached the point of no return for doing so.
