After a bizarre sexual encounter with a ghost, a twenty-something woman (Lindsay Burdge) begins experiencing inexplicable changes in her body. Harrison Atkins directs this supernatural horror-comedy, which received its world premiere at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival.
Slight though it may be, Lace Crater's mix of Andrew Bujalski-style naturalism and Roman Polanski-style body horror is at least off-kilter enough to keep one absorbed throughout.
A queasy demise is the best-case scenario on the other side of a one-night stand in Harrison Atkins' Lace Crater, a s-s-s-s-s-s-spooky and inventive indie debut that's best seen, if possible, in a packed theatre.
Lace Crater is sometimes a comedy, sometimes a horror film, but at its core is something bleaker than either genre is ordinarily willing to contemplate.
Ms. Burdge - all quicksilver emotion and exposed nerve endings - is an endlessly watchable focal point. Her character's vulnerability, uncertainty and growing self-acceptance lend the movie a necessary gravity.
Atkins continues to grow as a filmmaker with Lace Crater and it's inspiring and refreshing to see such an interesting person with peculiar points of view pursuing their vision.
What at first looks like a mumblecore comedy with a supernatural twist turns into something darker, and many viewers will not feel like going along for the detour into psychological horror.
Lace Crater elbows us to think about how quickly we dismiss "crazy ladies" - women who need things we can't give, who cry and mutter and glare and ruin parties
Atkins' modest means bely ambitious notions about the haunted self, drawing not only from the lo-fi snapshots of early comedies by Bujalski and Swanberg but, yes, even the psychological horror of Polanski.
It would spill over into silly if not for the delicate performance of Burdge, who brings a palpable fragility and anchors the film with her sensitive, intensely physical performance.
