FAFF 2020 Review: Anonymous Animals will make your skin crawl.

FAFF 2020 Review: Anonymous Animals will make your skin crawl.

By: The Rev. Dan Wilson

French filmmakers aren’t afraid to make some fucked up movies and hot damn do I love that about them. I recall our coverage of the Chattanooga Film Festival back in the spring for the movie Jumbo. It was sold to me as “a movie about a girl who does the nasty with a Tilt-A-Whirl”. While that was a bit of a gross oversimplification, it was equal parts completely bizarre and surprisingly sweet. By the end I was actually rooting for the forbidden lovers to succeed. 

Well, 2020’s Anonymous Animals by Director/Writer Baptiste Rouveure is a French film that checks any sort of that optimism at the door and gives you an all out sensory assault and sense of impending doom throughout instead, but it sure does deliver on the fucked up part. 

The premise is pretty simple. The world of humans and animals has been flipped on its head and the rolls are now reversed. They treat us exactly as we treat them, and the results aren’t pretty. We see a literal “Deer Hunter” chasing after pitiful human prey as he brandishes a shotgun. We see cattle herding people and sending them through the old slaughterhouse to be made into meat, we see a pack of dogs making humans fight each other to the death, and a number of other disturbing reversal of fortune scenarios. 

This is some weird, trippy, experimental filmmaking at its best. I recommend watching it half in the bag, though I’d avoid any sort of hallucinogens as it could lead to a bad time. There really isn’t much of a coherent plot per se, just a collection of examples of these supremely disturbing humanoid creatures with animal heads inflicting some variety of torture on a hapless human. 

There is also absolutely no dialogue in the entire movie. Just humans screaming in terror and animals grunting and making disturbing animal noises. 

I suppose there is some sort of Peta inspired or Vegan message here, since we ultimately find out that we really wouldn’t like it at all if animals treated us the way that we treat them, but it didn’t change my diet or anything. I don’t feel like they’re going for that in any sort of heavy handed manner here, the main goal is clearly to make a disturbing film. Most of the gore or violence is implied or cut away from, yet there are snapshots from this thing that will haunt me for weeks to come and there is a real artistic flair about the imagery, the mood the film sets, and overall disturbing tone. This is the type of movie that gets under your skin, sits there a while and causes you to think. If that sounds like your kind of film, then you should seek out Anonymous Animals. 

The Muji Movie Minute: The Rental (2020) Review

THE MUJI MOVIE MINUTE: Dave Franco’s “The Rental” is a promising directorial debut that doesn’t quite stick the landing.

In “The Rental”, 2 couples rent a luxurious beach house for a weekend getaway that goes horribly wrong.  Charlie (Dan Stevens) and his wife Michelle (Alison Brie) decide to celebrate his company’s success with Charlie’s coworker Mina (Sheila Vand) and her boyfriend Josh (Jeremy Allen White). Josh also happens to be Charlie’s brother. Quickly it becomes obvious that there is not only at least a little more than professional admiration between Charlie and Mina but that Michelle and Josh both notice and are each dealing with it in different ways. Josh, an underachiever compared to his older brother, is afraid that the beautiful and talented Mina will realize that she can do better and leave him, Michelle isn’t happy having to share so much of her husband but has learned to accept it. These complicated relationships wont be anything new to those familiar with co-writer Joe Swanberg’s previous work in the Mumblecore genre. 

The strength of this movie comes from the performances and the relationship drama between the characters. The cast is great and is highlighted by Sheila Vand. Her character is more complicated than the normal final girl. She is smart, strong, and beautiful, but makes some very bad decisions as the film goes on. The movie also looks beautiful. Franco and cinematographer Christian Sprenger take full advantage of the giant beach house and beautiful location that it sets on. 

Sadly, this is almost a tale of 2 movies. The first 2/3’s is mostly a relationship drama which works really well. It’s the last third of the movie where it turns into a slasher that it starts to faulter. We are clued in early that someone is watching the house from a distance, but we don’t know who. Unfortunately, once we get to the action it is not very rushed and not suspenseful. It almost seems like we are just going through the motions to get to the final scenes’ revelations (which I wont spoil here). The characters also make some irrational choices. I love slashers and can forgive a lot when it comes to dumb decisions, but they really start to pile up over the last 30 minutes of this movie. It’s a real shame that the excellent character build up that the movie achieves just isn’t capitalized on. 

“The Rental” won’t make you afraid to book your next short-term rental but maybe it will make you at least be sure to lock your doors and windows. Dave Franco does show promise as a filmmaker even if this film’s final act feels like an afterthought.