Review of Excision (2012) by Anthony T — 03 Aug 2012

Well I've got pretty much what I was looking for.

Richard 'Ricky' Bates Jr. has created this film from a short film that apparently had passed at Fantasia Festival few years back and now he's back to Montreal for the Canadian premiere of the full feature film.

The sold out theater at Fantasia Festival has really accepted this movie well and so did I.

First of all, needless to say that Annalynne McCord, who is by the way only one month younger than me, did a phenomenal work in this film and so did the make-up artist. The whole transformation to the role, about which she talked about in the Q&A post screening, was so impressive that I just can't deny that this was the best thing about the movie despite its other strengths.

The dream sequences of the main character were very impressive and much inspired by Lynch's and Kroenenberg's works. The school scenes and their editing resembled much Richard Kelly's Donnie Darko except in female version of the main character, of course. I've found quite a lot of resemblances with Donnie Darko actually, but I would not put a parallel between the two films, since they have barely anything in common in terms of the plot and character development.

Throughout the whole film I was going for the 4.0 - 4.5 stars, but the uplifting and shocking ending has won me over and I have to admit that for the independent film that it is, I just can't find anything better this year and I probably won't. I was impressed and entertained by so many things in the movie that if I start listing all of them, I might see the sunrise by the time I'm done.