The best thrillers are exercises in manipulating perceptions, whether that means how we see characters or how we see the scenarios in which they’re placed. A good thriller filmmaker can make you believe that what you see might not really be there, that the logical next step is extremely far away, and that the ending was staring you right in the face the whole time (whether that’s true or not). With the right approach and the right talent, they’re all out to create the elusive narrative feeling of inevitable surprise, something that was always there and yet never there.
Fantastic Fest is good for a lot of different genre films, but in my time with the festival, I’ve found it especially good for small and mid-budget thrillers–films that don’t offer flashy car chases and gun battles but still pour on the tension and intrigue through sheer force of craft, ingenuity, and, of course, great performances. Though they’re not the only solid thrillers to roll out of the 2024 fest, Bone Lake and Gazer are films that have stuck with me this year because they’re both case studies in expertly toying with our perceptions of a given scenario.
In Mercedes Bryce Morgan’s Bone Lake, we enter the realm of AirBnB horror exemplified by films like The Rental and Barbarian, as a pair of couples find themselves double booked at the same luxurious country lake house for the weekend. Diego (Marco Pigossi) and Sage (Maddie Hasson) get there first; however, Diego’s plans of proposing amid a certain rockiness in their relationship are interrupted by the arrival of Will (Alex Roe) and Cin (Andra Nechita), a more free-spirited couple who seem deliriously in love to an off-putting degree for Diego and Sage.
As the two couples decide to make the best of the double-booking, something strange starts to happen. Will and Cin start probing Diego and Sage’s relationship for weak spots, whether it’s gathering gossip about one to tell the other, or just asking point-blank about certain sticking points like, say, Diego’s fledgling writing career. Joshua Friedlander’s script wrings maximum discomfort from these interactions, while Morgan’s camera increasingly paints in shadows, masking what might really be going on?
As for what is going on, you’ll have to wait and see the movie to find out for yourself, but I was delighted by the way Bone Lake rolls it out. It’s one of those films that’s an exercise in sustained, deeply effective tension and psychosexual exploration for almost all of its runtime, before it completely lets go and descends into You’re Next-style madness by the end. Take the weird sexual dynamics of something like The Rental, throw in a dose of Speak No Evil provocation, and you’ve got it. Bone Lake is a wonderfully contained, ornate little thriller, and a blast to watch.
In Gazer, we’re again talking about a thriller that plays with our perceptions, but in a much different way that comes from a different emotional psychosphere. The film follows Frankie (Ariella Mastroianni, who also co-wrote the movie), a single Mom with a degenerative neurological condition that causes her to “zone out” and have dissociative episodes while also playing with her basic cognitive function. To cope, she makes tapes for herself, essentially serving as her own narrator and meditative guide so she can keep focus and get through the day.
Frankie’s principal goal is to be able to make enough money to leave her young daughter with some kind of nest egg when her brain finally goes and she’s no longer able to function, and she thinks she’s found a windfall when she meets a stranger (Renee Gagner) with a simple job. All Frankie has to do is go to this woman’s apartment, which she shares with an abusive brother, take her car keys, and move her car somewhere far away so the woman can make a clean break from a bad situation. That’s it, and she gets a few grand for her trouble. Of course, because this is a neo-noir film that feels a little like Blood Simple meets Blowout, Frankie finds herself at the center of a murder mystery instead.
The trick here, as director and co-writer Ryan J. Sloan unspools this narrative, is to root everything in classic ’80s neo-noir aesthetic, from grainy cinematography to sparse rooms where tension is thick enough to be furniture. It roots the film not just in a certain look, but in a certain set of expectations which Sloan and Mastroianni then upset. Frankie’s story is one of desperation, like many noir protagonists, but it’s also one of strained relationships with the world around her as her brain rebels against reason and reality. At various points in this film, Frankie’s episodes of mental turmoil feel like Blue Velvet; at others, they feel like Videodrome, complete with strange, fleshy appendages in an otherwise realistic landscape. It’s a remarkable feat of juxtaposition that occasionally pushes the narrative into pure horror territory.
The real key, of course, is Mastroianni, who imbues Frankie with a workaday realism she’s then able to twist into remarkable vulnerability as this young woman’s world unravels before us. It’s a mammoth performance in a very solid neo-noir thriller, and it makes Gazer an essential for neo-noir fiends looking for their next fix.
Bone Lake had its world premiere at Fantastic Fest 2024, with future distribution ahead from LD Entertainment.
Gazer had its North American Premiere at Fantastic Fest 2024. Metrograph has acquired the film for North American distribution.
