Tearsucker
Seasoned fear-fare aficionados may be well versed in the set-up of director Stephen Vanderpool’s Tearsucker — a young woman falls for a seemingly charming stranger who turns out to be hiding a deadly side and goes on a trip with him despite her best friend’s uncertainties about the situation — but I can guarantee that the villain in this dark, macabre work has a disturbing perversion that you haven’t seen before. The film’s official logline, so that readers can rest assured I am spoiling nothing that isn’t already out for public consumption, is “Emotionally vulnerable women are preyed on by a charming psychopath who wants to suck their tears.” Tom (Sam Brittan) is the psycho in question, and he has his sights set on Lilly (Alison Walter), who has recently left an abusive relationship and is sharing her experience on social media, with tears aplenty flowing. Brittan’s screenplay is an intriguing, unsettling character study of both predator and prey. He gives a disturbing, spine-tingling performance as the titular menace, who is well practiced and faking emotions and telling women what he thinks they want to hear. Walter is terrific as an abused young woman who is putting herself in the public spotlight to share her experiences, and taking a chance on romance once again. Danielle McRae Spisso provides solid support as Lilly’s friend Deb. Vanderpool provides Tearsucker with aplomb, combining surreal sequences and shots with stark, realistic drama and a constant sense of unease.
Mind Body Spirit
In Mind Body Spirit, yoga practitioner and aspiring social media influencer Anya (Sara J. Bartholomew) has left her poor relationship with her mother many miles behind her as she has moved to a house that she inherited from her grandmother — a house that no one, even her mother, knew existed until after the grandmother’s death. Anya has obviously never watched a horror movie with cautionary messages about moving into the home of a deceased or estranged relative, of which there are many. She discovers, in decidedly creepy and hidden areas of the house, some esoteric writing and drawings left by her grandmother. As she attempts to incorporate these elements into her yoga videos and her life, Anya finds that a dark presence is sharing the abode with her. Codirectors Alex Henes and Matthew Merenda, who cowrote the screenplay with Topher Hendricks, combine components of both found-footage movies and social media camerawork and editing. The result is a far more pleasurable experience than the oft-seen shaky-cam style of many found-footage films, with most shots being static ones. One aspect that seems out of place, though, is that the camera sometimes appears to move by itself to focus viewers’ attention on occurrences that would otherwise be out of frame, and that are happening unbeknownst to Anya. Mind Body Spirit is pretty much Bartholomew’s to carry, and she does terrific work, starting off showing both her character’s strong will and insecurities — the latter helped none at all by frenemy and highly successful physical fitness influencer Kenzie (Madi Bready in a nice supporting turn), with whom Anya hopes to collaborate. Henes, Merenda, and Hendricks put a current spin on well-known familial fright-fare approaches. They make their film work well by taking the opposite tack of many current horror films involving social influencers by making their main influencer likable, and Bartholemew does a fine job getting viewers invested in Anya’s dread-filled journey.
Tearsucker and Mind Body Spirit screen as part of Chattanooga Film Festival, which runs June 23–29, 2023, in person and with a virtual version. For more information, visit https://www.chattfilmfest.org/.
