A horror comedy about ambition, sacrifice, and the curse of being a theater kid that offers flashes of inspiration without lasting impact.
How far would you go to turn ambition into art? Willow (Decker Sadowski), an engineering student with an actor father in her past, is unexpectedly cast in the lead of a local staging of The Women of Trachis. At first she is flattered by the attention of the director Matthew (Shane West) and drawn into the orbit of her fellow actors – Taylor (Madison Lawlor), Shannon (Olivia Blue), and Zac (Colin McCalla). Gradually, though, the rehearsals take on the quality of ritual, pushing Willow to discover how much of herself she is prepared to surrender.
Dudas and her collaborators lean heavily on their own backgrounds in performance. The film catches the mannerisms of student theatre with accuracy: the rivalries, the heightened emotions, the need to perform even offstage. That insider knowledge gives the work a sense of authenticity, but it also locks the tone into a very particular register. Much of the humour rests on the self-conscious excess of theatre culture, which will delight those who share that history while leaving others at a distance. The material feels shaped for theatre kids, by theatre kids, and rarely tries to speak beyond that circle.
The horror is introduced with a prologue that promises occult menace, yet the exact supernatural threat remains obscure until the closing act. In between, satire dominates and the atmosphere drifts. Only when events finally tips into violence does the film regain a sense of purpose. The climax lands with force, thanks to West’s full embrace of caricature and Sadowski’s credible shift from ingénue to avenger.
Conceptually the film is ambitious, with Greek tragedy filtered through campus melodrama, and rehearsal exercise as Faustian bargains, but those layers do not always fuse. Elements succeed, like the claustrophobic portrait of young actors sacrificing themselves for a role. But for anyone outside that theatre kid world, the experience is less possession than in-joke.
Theater Is Dead played at Fantastic Fest in Austin, TX
Whitlock&Pope 