directed by:
Sashia Dumont, Paul Robinson written by: Sashia Dumont genre: Horror |
I really dig the way this film unfolds right off the drop. Usually, when you’re dealing with films & movies about possession and whatnot, you’re right there witnessing it all happen, watching the battle between good and evil take shape in real-time. In “The Resonance,” that battle has already taken place, and its grizzly verdict has already been rendered by the time we click play. Dr. Burt Landry had been enlisted to consult a patient who was believed to be possessed. He came in, did his thing, and three weeks later, both the patient and Dr. Landry suffered “violent and untimely deaths.” That’s already a freaky enough backstory, to begin with, but to take the story even further, we’re introduced to psychologist Sloane Campbell, who is essentially in charge of trying to figure out what actually went on throughout this case.
Sloane is well prepared for this. When we meet her, she’s already got a double stack of coffees in her hands, so she’s obviously ready to get down to business and do some work. Rather than immediately crack into a bunch of horrific details and/or possession-related imagery, “The Resonance” wisely dials things back to tell you this story from a much more clever perspective. You’ll see things like the stack of tapes that Sloane has to listen to, and You’ll see her notes on what she hears – which, while written in what’s actually a fairly legible script for a doctor, we can clearly see they mention how Dr. Landry was on a decline of his own according to her assessment. Calm instrumental piano music is playing while we witness all of this taking place, and Sloane appears to be quite okay with things at first – she’s got that naturally objective, clinical approach that seems to insulate her from feeling any type of way in particular as she weighs the facts of this case. She’s got an interesting stack of books on her shelf – one that I even recognized because I’ve got a copy myself – Aleister Crowley’s “Be Here Now.” Interesting. In any event, Sloane makes notes in these books and does her due diligence to assess this case as accurately as possible. Roughly about a third of the way into this short film, you get the sense that she feels like she’s got her finger on the pulse of what has occurred and that Campbell likely feels there’s not too much left to the story. As you see her begin to start thinking about wrapping things up and getting her notes in order, she pops in the final tape – and that’s where you can see Sloane’s face start to take on a much more concerned look as she listens to some of the very last recorded words from Dr. Landry. He sounds tremendously frightened in the audio from the final tape in the series - and equally defeated. With each passing word he utters, you see Sloane’s face continue to get more and more serious, knowing that this person who would have been a peer or perhaps even a colleague, had met his match and found that he’d come up short for what was required to properly and professionally deal with the situation. So…you betcha…we go from drinking coffee to drinking the hard stuff right quick, and justifiably so. Sloane’s moved on from being worried to now practically being in a full-on panic of sorts. The tape she’d been listening to only moments earlier seems to have gone blank, and for a moment, we’re left to wonder if she, too, is starting to go a little crazy herself. Making sure to rule out any strangeness that she can on her own, she grabs a different tape deck – and that’s when she hears the same demonic voice that Dr. Landry had to confront before he died. It’s terrifying in the most subtle of ways, and believe me, when I tell ya, it doesn’t ease up on us from there. With about three or four minutes left to go, objects start to move, Sloane starts to see people, presumably Dr. Landry, and then all of a sudden, much like the situation with the tape, she wakes up, and it’s like everything that we just saw taking place has been completely erased and reset…or maybe, never even really happened at all. Was it real? Was it a dream? A nightmare? An apparition? Years and years of psychological turmoil that has been stored up, slowly traumatizing Sloane, and now just coming out? Or did she really just witness something beyond explanation that will change her forever? I’m not here to spoil it all for you – so I’m gonna have to leave a few things out so that you’ll watch it on your own, but suffice it to say, I don’t know that even IF I gave you all the details of this story that I could ruin it for anyone. Based on what I witnessed, “The Resonance” is still highly interpretive in terms of what conclusions we could draw. I think there are definitely some obvious ones. Occam’s Razor suggests those would likely be the right ones to consider to be the truth…but Writer/Director/Star Sashia Dumont, who plays Sloane in the film, has expertly left just enough grey area and mystery so that we can debate the ending and what really happened a little bit more, even if it seems like we’re all sure about what we just witnessed.
Co-directed with Paul Robinson, “The Resonance” is really quite something to watch. I loved the fact that it was able to be as frightening as it was while actually showing us very little. Sure, it’s fair to say that it ramps up its visual frights a lot in its final third, but for the greater part of this short film, Robinson and Dumont wisely allow your mind to fill in the blanks as it plays on. With each passing scene, we feel the tension building along with our own instincts of terror…it’s like the entire film is flashing one giant DANGER sign at us, yet we know we need to see this through to the end, just like Sloane Campbell did herself, despite the warnings and the implied peril. I was completely impressed by the pace and the patience that Robinson & Dumont show us, allowing the tension to build way more in our own mind than by anything done too quickly onscreen - so that when we do reach the finale, it’s almost like a sigh of relief in a weird way. Seeing the end of this film is like a sort of confirmation that’s relieving…like it confirms that we weren’t crazy to be thinking what we were thinking, and neither was Campbell. “The Resonance” is a very carefully cultivated film that prides itself on slowly doling out its frightening conclusion but really ends up delivering something so satisfying and psychologically warped. Crafted and conceived by Dumont to “blur the line between modern medicine and religion,” according to the notes I’ve got scattered here across my dusty, dimly lit desk…I’d say that this mission has been completely accomplished if that synopsis was indeed her goal in creating “The Resonance.” It’s a very well-thought-out script, the execution is spot-on, and with such a limited number of cast members (two in total), Sashia Dumont maintained complete control over her vision for this film, and she really delivered it. I thought she was perfect as Sloane Campbell, and I really think “The Resonance” triumphs greatly by taking the road less travelled in terms of what’s being shown to us and how. You feel that tension building scene by scene, and much to Dumont’s credit, she knew precisely where she wanted to take this film by the end, which gives “The Resonance” the finale that we wanted to see/the film deserves. There are no substantial complaints from me here at all. I’m confident that four stars out of five express how impressed I was with this film…and heck, I could see that “The Resonance” might even potentially score higher in many ways, too. It’s a complete and cohesive idea, it’s got flawless acting…it’s fairly bare-bones when it comes to any bells and whistles, I suppose, but it also proves that great storytelling doesn’t need that. This is the kind of strong building block you’d want to have on your resume, though, in my opinion – I’d not only trust Sashia Dumont with the script for a full-length movie from here on in, but I’d put her directly in charge of the best of the best scripts an agent could get their hands on. She’s got real vision, craft, and the kind of authenticity & cleverness that is severely hard to come by – I love this film of hers! |
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