Custom
Custom follows young couple Harriet (Abigail Hardingham) and Jasper (Rowan Polonski). In an attempt to remain financially stable, Harriet and Jasper engage in sex work. The couple quickly falls into the wallet of a deranged customer with unknown motives. When nightmare and reality blur, the lovers soon find themselves in way over their heads. Will these custom videos mark the downfall of their relationship?
Tiago Teixeira’s feature debut starts strong. It remains visually intriguing with a hearty blend of psychological horror. Custom’s billing as “erotic thriller’ is a bit of a rug pull. While it contains a level of explicitness, Custom is erotic by definition only. Teixeira barely attempts to push the envelope and stops at the idea of anything truly groundbreaking. There’s an attempt to be a sexy, psychological mind bender, but it’s little more than a Clonenberg. (Am I allowed to trademark that word?)
I can see what Teixeira was going for, and I applaud the effort. It just feels that a feature debut should have a level of oompf behind it. Custom fails to be titillating in a way that would make me want to spread the word via whispers. A movie like this should make the audience feel some sort of way, but it left me feeling little to nothing by the time the credits rolled. Custom has some wonderfully breathtaking imagery that’s sausaged between two cardboard characters and a story that leaves much to be desired.
Crossword
Tessa (Aurora Perrineau) and James (Michael Vlamis) are reeling from the recent loss of their daughter Lilly. While James wallows in self-pity, Tessa goes on to write a highly successful children’s book in honor of Lilly. James devotes his mundane days to solving the crossword puzzle from his local paper. But the answers to the crossword puzzles soon become a bit too on the nose. Is James being taunted by a seemingly sentient crossword puzzle? Or has his grief consumed every aspect of his psyche?
Director Michael Vlamis (who also co-wrote with Kyle Anderson) have a nifty idea with Crossword. It’s an interesting tete-a-tete between two grieving parents that explores the facets of grief. But it gets a bit too caught up in its ideas and slowly becomes preachy in its subject matter. Its ambiguous ending does nothing more than attempt to add a question mark to a film that should have ended with a period.
Crossword’s most enjoyable aspect comes from What We Do In The Shadows’ Harvey Guillén. Guillén chews up the scenery in an incredibly fun way and completely steals the show. My only issue with his character is that it’s opposite to the tone previously established. Anderson and Vlamis’s script is tight and well-paced, but its hammer-headed grief becomes more of a drag than a positive.