Danny Kuchuck & John Weiner's
CRYPTIC
reviewed by
SYLVAIN RICHARD
Sylvain
Richard is a film critic at Arts & Opinion. He
gave Cryptic, which played at the 2009
Fantasia World Film Festival, 3.1 out of 4
stars. For the rest of his ratings, click
HERE.
Since
we have all made mistakes in life and since we all have imaginations,
there isn’t one of us who hasn’t regretted something
done in the past, and hasn’t imagined a more favourable
outcome.
Correctively
rewriting or reimagining a negative event that has already
taken place invariably produces a better result over a past
performance: fantasizing the sharing of feelings we kept locked
up inside for people who are no longer with us; the not partaking
of a bad habit the price of which we’re now paying.
Almost
as deftly as the genre of revisionism in history (books that retell
history from the “what if” perspective), cinema, that
uniquely lends itself to recreating the past, has in numerous
guises wonderfully exploited the desire to go back into the past
in order to alter an outcome. Doing that genre proud is the latest
from Danny Kuchuck and co-writer John Weiner, in a compelling
film entitled Cryptic, which played at Montreal’s
2009 Fantasia Film Festival.
Cryptic,
which compares favourably with Frequency by Gregory Hoblit,
is a science fiction thriller that explores the effects of information
being sent back though time and the effects of changes in the
past on the present.
Transcending
an improbable premise and a budget that doesn’t allow for
the Hollywood effects required to simulate time travel, Cryptic
-- enabled by a winning script, an understanding of the limitations
of HD and award winning editing (won award for Best Editing at
2009 Brooklyn International Film Festival) -- joins company with
the best in a genre that is otherwise overwhelmed by mostly self-indulgent,
undisciplined filmmaking.
Nineteen
year old Jessie Graver (played by Julie Carlson) finds an old
cell phone she was given for her 9th birthday. She decides to
dial her old number and finds the younger version of herself on
the other line, whose mother is about to be electrocuted in their
swimming pool. The older Jessie, still haunted by that tragedy,
is resentful of her father for having remarried their next door
neighbour. The older attempts to get the younger, via cryptic
communication, to prevent their mother from taking that fateful
trip to the swimming pool. 
While
becoming familiar with the mind of her younger self, her present
state of mind alters when the younger is convinced by the elder
to do things differently. How could it be otherwise?
To the
credit of the directors and exceptional performances from the
leads, the audience overlooks the illogics of the film’s
cause and effect because the characters are so believable. Which
is to say, the film works equally well as a character study as
a science fiction enterprise. The dynamic between Gould and Carlson
as the younger and older Jessie is the centripetal glue that keeps
all the disparate aspects of this difficult-to-pull-off thriller
from flying off into incredulity.
Staying
clear of what is formulaic in the genre, Cryptic never
threatens to slip into predictability because every frame fulfils
the function of an enigma or puzzle that thoroughly engages the
audience. On top of which the directors know when and how best
to introduce an unexpected twist or coincidence that not only
jacks up our curiosity indices, but provides for the psychological
underpinnings that immeasurably enhance what is a small gem of
a film that shines ever so brightly in a genre whose brightest
stars are in fact fewer than one would expect.
Against
the odds, I predict that Cryptic, which doesn’t
have the big machine working for it, will not disappear gently
into film’s oblivious night. It’s too good for that,
and it will be too bad if you miss it when it comes your way via
the film festival circuit.
Credits
Director: Danny Kuchuck, John Weiner
Screenplay: Danny Kuchuck, John Weiner
Cast: Julie Carlson, Toby Huss, Johnny Pacar, Jadin Gould
Producers: Danny Kuchuck, John Weiner
Distributor: Danny Kuchuck
For
the ratings of 2008 Fantasia Film Festival, HERE.
