Krisha (2016)

I'll tell you why so serious

hyped garbage

Good start, but then it gets ruined

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

I am going to give you a PLOT SPOILER review (not ending) as I think knowing the mystery enhances the story. Krisha (Krisha Fairchild) attends the family get together at Thanksgiving. She has been gone a long time. Very long. Her son Trey (Trey Edward Shults) ended up being raised by her sister (Victoria Fairchild) and she wants to reconnect. We see Krisha sneaking around the house checking draws etc. and I didn't know if she planned on poisoning everyone or was really a man with an operation. As it turns out this is a story about her alcohol addiction- there that was the plot spoiler.The house is filled with commotion and the soundtrack is just piano and drum noise making the audience feel the commotion too. It grips you. The emotions run high in the film as it envelops the viewer and makes them uneasy and tense.It is a Lifetime drama on steroids, if you like that type of thing.Guide: F-word. Porn is playing on the TV of which we get a distant glimpse, but get to hear the groans.

I'm a struggling filmmaker myself in a third world country, that's why I didn't want to keep looking for inspiration in films with budgets I'd probably never get myself. I chose to watch Krisha because I wanted to see how can a low budget movie get so many praise and oh lord, now I understand. It turns out all you need is a crap load of talent. Trey builds such a fresh and unique storytelling for what we can say is a story told too many times. I loved it so much I just had to re watch it again right away... 3 times in a row! I love the details of the characters, the tricky staging and movement. If you've worked with amateur actors, you should be very impressed with the scene where Krisha comes downstairs to find a really loud, crowded and messy living room. Trey gives a reason to the movements and actions every character makes, these details are telling the backstory. It's pretty smart to compare the scene where Chase and Logan are arm wrestling with the building tension and subtle "wrestling" in the conversation between Krisha and Doyle. It's not constructed in an obvious parallel meaning, so that was nice.This movie has a lot of layers you'd probably won't see at first. The first person who welcomes Krisha is Alex, the only one who doesn't know her in the family. He's the one who opens the door for her, not the other members of the family. They are far and unaware she's there. Then we see Robyn, who is behind the dog gates, they hug through this gates but then Robyn breaks them so she can be with her sister. She's letting her guard down and breaking the walls between them. Only after she does this, we see the other family members come to her and receive her as if nothing ever happened.When Trey comes, his first line is "What happened to the gates?". A truly smart question to make in a situation like this one. What happened to the emotional walls? He means.Another clever meaning for the dog gates separating and protecting the dining room, supposedly from the dogs. But then we find out the wine is hiding in this room. Might these dog gates also be there to avoid Krisha from entering that room?I could go on and on about the wonderful details I've been finding, but I can't keep writing because I feel the need to watch this movie for the 5th time.

The unpleasant dynamics and tensions that many families navigate during the holidays can sometimes be downright horrifying. "Krisha," the story of a woman reunited with her family after she estranged herself many years ago in order to face her demons, is a stark reminder of how traumatic confronting the past can be.Starring his aunt (Krisha Fairchild) and featuring himself and many of his family members, filmmaker Trey Edward Shults has gone extremely personal for his debut feature (based off a short of the same name). The film has a documentary-like feel at times and the family dynamics that play out on screen seem unusually authentic and genuine. Yet underneath it all, Shults works with camera technique and a non-traditional score to remind us how unsettling and difficult this is for his title character."Krisha," the film and the character, slowly becomes unhinged over the course of the film. Shults' script smartly denies us the amount of background information we'd like to have; we don't need to know exactly what she's done or what her problems were to be able to observe how frazzled this environment makes her and how confronting these long- ignored but deep-rooted relationships could dismantle her mentally and emotionally.Shults begins and ends his film with close-ups of Krisha's face giving an indiscernible expression, perhaps with the goal of empathy. Normally we would empathize with the "normal" family members and in many ways we still do, but Shults stays close to Krisha in nearly every moment of the film and gives us piercing access to who she is. Fairchild rises up to meet the challenges that level of intimacy places on an actor. We see Krisha's discomfort and pain, and the sadness when her desire to make things right hits the roadblock of the pain she caused others in the past. When tension does turn over to drama, the way it plays out feels impressively true to life. Shults clearly plays loose with his script, allowing these unseasoned actors to draw on their own experiences (and perhaps some actual family dynamics) and improvise dialogue. Even if you haven't had a family member melt down in front of everyone, there's a raw truth to the way tense scenes between people play out. That authenticity only makes "Krisha" all the more haunting.Shults' direction and editing, however, is really the star of this film. He has strong instincts in terms of suspense, creating that slow build and unhinging of his film in the most simple of ways. Even in the most mundane of scenes, he draws forward any tension lurking beneath the surface. He also allows us to see, hear and experience things as the overmedicated mind of Krisha does, yet the techniques are not heavy-handed. He even plays with the chronology of events, weaving together scenes to focus on the emotional arc of the story as it pertains to Krisha rather than feeling beholden to how everything builds up in real time. The result is a much stronger portrait of Krisha and what's truly happening at a deeper level.Filmmakers that can wield tension and suspense in this way have the skills to tell just about any story well, which bodes well for Shults' career. If he can turn the story of a troubled woman relapsing at Thanksgiving into what you might argue is a horror film that at times verges on Darren Aronofsky's "Requiem for a Dream," the sky's the limit.~Steven CThanks for reading! Visit Movie Muse Reviews for more

Where to begin? . . . . Cinema, at its best, is an experience. It is a medium through which the viewer is engaged; titillated, repulsed, shocked, confounded, angered, humored or otherwise incited to feel any number of emotions among the spectrum of the human experience. As an avid movie- watcher, it is sometimes easy to forget the potential and power of the medium.Going into the film, I knew close to nothing: something about a thanksgiving dinner complicated by an estranged and drug-addled family member. I had no expectations other than to be entertained, which has unfortunately become the basic function of most mainstream filmmaking. One and a half hours later, I was absolutely floored. Mouth agape and scrambling to find out who the cast and director were, as well of the title of an immaculately applied Nina Simone track in one of the most poignant scenes I remember having seen in a long time.The film's 27-year-old director (writer and editor to boot) Trey Edward Schults exhibits such a masterful technical literacy in the editing and execution of this film, it is hard to believe that it is his first feature. I am so pleased to see a filmmaker who is so consciously aware that the camera, not the actors, is the primary storyteller. It reminds me that the director is still the auteur, and not just a shot-manager who is paid to dress up performances.Even so, Krisha Fairchild's performance will forever be burned into my brain. It is not always easy to watch, as it surely was not easy to perform, but even if the film's execution had been otherwise mediocre, it would still be worth the rental price to watch this gem in action.I hope I've piqued any prospective viewers' interest. I will keep it short from here on out. I give the film 9 out of 10 stars for several reasons.1. Aforementioned Shults' direction and Fairchild's performance. 2. The film's testament to the fact that vision and execution will always trump budget and star- power. Let that be a lesson to the industry! 3. The soundtrack is unique and extremely emotionally manipulative.I hope Mr. Schults will grow and continue to do very promising things in the future. I also hope that other young independent film-makers like Shults will emerge, paying homage to the greats (as Shults seemed to have done with the Shining here) while offering their own novel and idiosyncratic language. Bravo.