The Strings

I could not review this in a normal way. Instead, I present to you a timeline of my viewing experience. For context, the movie is described on Shudder as a woman going to her aunt’s cabin in rural Canada, hoping to find inspiration on the music she is writing, but encountering some supernatural forces along the way. This is a lie. You will soon see how. Intro, and it’s my 2nd least favorite kind of movie intro scene: the unconnected-to-our-main-character-but-a-harbinger-of-the-plot opening. And after finishing the movie, I can now say it not only does not connect to the main character, it also doesn’t connect to the plot. Or set the stage in any way. It is wholly divorced from the 90 minutes that will follow. After ten minutes, she has driven through snowy terrain. Stopped to smoke, check out the scenery, and driven some more. It’s like the opening of Birdemic, but not filmed on a Nintendo DS. But it did try to make the snowy wilderness of Canada spooky with gothic vocals for a score. Come on now. After 20 minutes in now. There’s a basement door. She stared at it. She walked around town, to the frozen ocean coastline, and puttered about the house. She’s done some redecorating, namely one specific painting in the living room she replaced with another painting. Watched the very detailed process of setting up her keyboards, samplers, looping machines, and recording equipment. The dialogue is bordering on a silent movie. There is no hint of a plot line, or even one approaching on the horizon. Does this movie know it’s in a movie? After 30 minutes, I still don’t know the main character’s name (future me: it’s Catherine). Watched her try to compose a song for almost five minutes. I didn’t come here to watch a solo version of Some Kind Of Monster. She had a Zoom chat with an unnamed friend that seems like it should trigger the plot (it mentions a photo shoot with someone for reasons) but no. So far, this movie has no interest in doing anything. There’s slow build and there’s no build. This is the latter, and it is excruciating. Around the 30 minute mark, oh look, the plot finally arrived! We have a second character! The photog (Grace) tells the backstory of this abandoned farmhouse they’ll be shooting at. Death, murder, suicide, vanishings. Woohoo, let’s go! After 35 minutes, I was wrong about the plot arriving. Five minutes of watching the photo shoot. That’s not an exaggeration. Pictures in a room, outside, in another room, on the staircase. They take a break, talk for a bit, then do MORE photography. WHAT IS THIS FOR AND WHY IS ANY OF THIS HAPPENING AND WHY DO I HAVE TO WITNESS IT IN PAINSTAKING DETAIL? Around the 40 minute mark, OH MY GOD WE MAY REALLY HAVE PLOT SIGN THIS TIME. The picture on the wall is rattling. A mysterious shadow in one of the pictures Grace took. Catherine is reacting to it the way one might react to looking for something in one’s spice rack that one isn’t sure they even have, but hey, this is bound to ramp up, right? Sure, only about half the movie left, so it’s gonna feel rushed, but maybe it’ll redeem itself somehow? At the 45 minute mark: Nope, take it back, I was wrong. Again. After those SPOOOOOOKY SPOOKUMS moments, we’re back to watching her daily fucking routine. Thrill as she watches a YouTube video! Marvel at using a French press! Chill as she does laundry! Now she’s laying on the couch looking at pictures on her phone! GAAAAAAAAAH WOULD YOU BE A MOVIE ALREADY YOU MYHFLGPG@&$#{———— 50 minutes in: MORE WATCHING HER RECORD MUSIC. What is this movie’s fascination with exhaustively documenting the recording process and her writer’s block? Oh, a phone call with her manager. She’s gotta do a small gig and an interview. She was in a band, but now they’re on hiatus, and she doesn’t want to answer questions about any of that, just the new music she can’t write. What is this movie’s fucking problem? WHERE IS THE HORROR? WHERE IS ANYTHING WORTH WATCHING? Does this movie know more than half its runtime has elapsed, and all there is to show for it is a couple carnival haunted house scare tactics that are done with all the intensity of visiting your great grandmother in an old folks home? And worse yet, THE MAIN CHARACTER DOESN’T REACT TO ANY OF IT. Not disturbed, not perturbed, not even curious. 55 minutes in, and this movie is breaking me in a way that even Private School didn’t. I’ve never seen a movie stand in defiance of itself the way this does. Private School was a crass, cynical checklist of the elements of a genre without a through-line or an artistic core. This is a stubborn refusal to acknowledge itself. It brings up the horror elements almost reluctantly, like doing so is a contractual obligation. I’m convinced the makers of this movie put them in begrudgingly, and would rather have just filmed the star’s creative process (she is a real life musician, although nobody famous). An hour in. The interview happened. You only get to see her side of it. You can get what she’s being asked from context, but still. Why does this have to be included? I don’t care about her former band, or the reasons it’s former (which are obviously stressful), and it has no bearing on the total absence of plot. This really feels like a creative process documentary gone awry. There’s another moment of spookums, and she finally has a reaction, but it’s fleeting and muted, and then the scene ends. I’m watching a movie hold itself hostage. Lovely. An hour and five: oh good, MORE driving and staring at the frozen ocean. Because we only have 30 minutes left. This movie knows its ending soon, right? It is aware the third act is what this is all (and I use “all” in a very loose sense) building towards. And now the performance at a bar, and the photographer is watching. I DON’T NEED TO SEE THE WHOLE SONG, MOVIE. I get what a performance looks like. I’ve been to concerts. And suddenly, her and the photog are in a relationship. Sure. You’ve planted zero seeds for this, movie — especially since earlier, it was mentioned she was in a relationship with a guy, so this is out of nowhere on two fronts — but fine. Bisexual representation is good, even if the movie hasn’t done a fucking thing to earn it. Around an hour ten: the scariest thing yet happens to her (haunting silhouette in her bedroom), and she reacts to it for half a minute. And then the movie takes a hard left turn and becomes a Lynchian ripoff. She stares at herself in the mirror in a mostly darkened room, takes a shower outdoors in the snow at night and does what I can only describe is an interpretive dance? And then walks naked into the snow? All of this is done in montage, so we have no idea of the chronology, or the purpose, or what’s actually going on. Again, nothing prior to this justifies this. It’s like, for three minutes, the movie became an entirely different genre. Also, this is the FOURTH time the movie has shown Catherine in the tub or a shower, each one inching towards nudity until this one. I don’t know why this movie felt the need to continually show her bathing ritual, or why this of all of them has her suddenly do some weird Bjork-dance-meets-tai-chi routine in the middle of it. I just assume she’s got normal cleanliness habits. The hour fifteen minute mark: she’s performing for her photog girlfriend at home, intercut with another trip to the frozen beach, and OH MY GOD WHY DOES THIS MOVIE REFUSE THE CONCEPT OF FORWARD MOMENTUM OR ACKNOWLEDGING THE PRIOR SCENE AND DEVELOPING FROM IT? Oh, Catherine had a nightmare! That does nothing for the plot! An hour 20, and she’s very slowly investigating something outside at night with a flashlight for no discernible reason. Like, she just got up and went outside. Not even a specific thing. Just … looking. I think she found an abandoned boot, which, ooh, scary, forgotten footwear! THERE’S TEN MINUTES LEFT AND THIS MOVIE HASN’T DEVELOPED A GODDAMNED THING AND IT IS ALMOST OVER AND WHY JUST WHY. An hour 25: She’s going down into the basement she said earlier she doesn’t remember existing. That’s funny. I can’t remember anything of my life before this movie. Hey, the main character’s name is finally spoken! Why is this basement scary? What is its connection to anything that’s been happening? The end: The photog friend dies in an accident because ghosts tried to hang her, but Catherine (the main character) saved her, but then they fall and the photog (Grace, incidentally) hits her head on a stool and dies. Awesome. That was worth the build. And then, get this, another lengthy musical performance! And the death of her suddenly new girlfriend? No acknowledgment whatsoever! And she’s performing with the band I think, so what the hell was all the talk of the band drama? And the performance keeps going through the credits, because why not. At this point, why anything. Why babies or the sky or Radiohead or sandwiches or life itself. And why this movie. Why. I need to go sit and think about things now.