Fantasy – The Movie Critic Next Door

Things can be pretty tense when you’re trying to land your dream job. When that dream job will also lead to a dream career it can be even more stressful, especially when you might have a real chance of making it big in the movie industry. And anything in the creative realm can be awfully unforgiving — if you don’t seriously impress everyone your first time out of the gate, you might never get another chance to try again. So imagine how aspiring writer / director Vignesh (Vignesh Shanmugam) feels in the short film Phantasmagoria when he wins a coveted appointment with a producer.

The characters up to no good — Part of the dream sequence. Or is it?

His friend (Manoj) was an aspiring director himself once upon a time, and he urges Vignesh in no uncertain terms not to let this opportunity get away. He has a great script that he calls the 234 script, and he plans to pitch this to the producer even though he’s concerned that the producer is too old-fashioned. This story is a little wild, you see, since he originally dreamt it and later turned it into a script. Then, just before his appointment, he discovers that all his work has mysteriously vanished. Did his envious friend steal the script? Has it fallen into the hands of a stranger up to no good? Or is Vignesh’s dream not over yet, in more ways than one?

The dream sequence is a common trope and can be a very effective one, but unfortunately it’s all too easy to become lazy with such sequences. But Phantasmagoria gets it absolutely right, creating a compelling, vividly disturbing dream landscape that leaves both Vignesh and the viewer uncertain as to what can be believed. The visual effects are subtle, realistic and just unsettling enough to seem as though they crawled straight out of the subconscious. Featuring convincing performances from the cast, the film is an impressive first effort from director MJ Arun Babu that’s a perfect example of what indie filmmaking can do and which I trust will lead to still greater things.

There are at least 16,000 awkward things about dating, especially those early dates. One of the most awkward — and one of the most likely to show up in questions to online advice columnists — is figuring out when to share a potentially sensitive fact about yourself. After all, there can be a fine line between letting the other person get to know you better and completely oversharing, and depending on the subject some of these conversations can be horrifying. It’s one thing to explain that you have an uncle who’s convinced there are aliens living in his rosebushes, and quite another to have to admit that you’re a werewolf, as happens in Simon’s Quest.

Simon (Johnny Pozzi) was a regular guy until one night and one bite turned him into a werewolf. He isn’t alone, at least, even though James (James Tison), the guy who turned him, vanished immediately thereafter. No, this is a world with plenty of monsters around, vampires and demons as well as werewolves, though they generally prefer to be called the afflicted rather than monsters. But Simon hasn’t had the nerve to date since he was turned, and Gwen (Talley Gale) and Robert (Lucas Brahme) want to change that.

Robert, Gwen, and Simon play games and talk Castlevania.

It’s a nice thought but they aren’t really all that helpful, since their main focus is on making a documentary about Simon’s life as a werewolf. They get him on Tinder and act as cheerleaders, but I’d be more than nervous enough about dating without two people watching (and recording) my every move. But he gets a match with a guy with the unlikely name of Skyye, and Simon tentatively starts trying to get other aspects of his life back together as well. He joins a support group for the afflicted, and with help from the group’s new leader, Pat (Timothy J. Cox), takes his first steps towards becoming part of the world again. But there are plenty of things waiting to trip him up along the way, and telling Skyye the whole truth might not even be the worst one.

With a solid script and capable directing from Marley Jaeger, it’s a wonderful mix of drama, humor, a touch of fantasy, and a dash of riotous satire — Axe Alucard (Anibal Nobel), monster hunter, is wildly over the top, as is Liz (Liz Days), the former support group leader, though honestly the demon in the group (Krystal K.C. Wilson) seems pretty nice. But Simon’s Quest also has plenty of genuinely touching moments, as Simon is constantly torn between his own deep loneliness and the very real chance that he might wake up the morning after the full moon to discover that he’s shredded the person he cares about most in the world. We all worry about hurting the ones we love sometimes, just not usually quite so literally.

There are obvious parallels between the plight of the monsters — sorry, afflicted — and the similar situations often faced by the LGBTQ community in the not too distant past. And it still isn’t all that easy to be anything other than mainstream in all your life choices, even these days. But this parallel is handled just as discreetly as the monsters are, without a drop of blood or a single sharp, shining fang appearing on-screen. It’s the quiet, gentle Simon and his very ungentle curse that will capture the audience, and rightly so. In these internet days it’s easy to forget that every bit of suffering you hear about has a human face attached — even if once a month that face might turn fanged and furry — and this compelling short film reminds us brilliantly of that.