In hindsight, watching the very arty Protanopia after just three hours of sleep the night before was perhaps not the wisest decision I've made. A good indication that a film's theme and story has totally been lost on you is reading the synopsis after having watched it and not recognising anything it talks about.
A quick search of the word protanopia reveals it is a type of colour blindness in which the person is unable to perceive any 'red' light, I'm not sure how that fits into anything.
This Matthew Mahler (What Jack Built) written and directed horror may have gone completely over my head, but it did have some really stand-out aspects to it that kept me along for the ride. I will include both what I had thought the film was about, as well as what the general synopsis stated it was about in this review.
Luke's (Anthony Carey) step-sister has gone missing while under his care, and so he hasn't been able to concentrate on his job as a writer. The Detective in charge of the case (John Heerlein) starts to suspect that Luke may be involved somehow. Meanwhile, Alan (Timothy J. Cox - What Jack Built) has become the president of the local neighbourhood committee after the death of his father. Here he finds himself in conflict with Janice (Paula Mahler), a busybody woman who obviously believes she should be the president of the committee. Their first order of business is to help search for a missing woman from the next town over.
The synopsis states that after Luke's sister goes missing he begins to have dreams of a strange house. The house is owned by Alan, and he appears to take care of the property in strange and unusual ways.
This was both very indie and very art house in its style. Despite the low budget look to much of this, the editing and camera effects were both very impressive, even if they did help in adding to my confusion. There are tints of various colours applied over the film, blue, green, and indeed red tints (I guess I must not suffer from protanopia to see that!), and often the film uses an effect of characters moving in weird frames, with after images of their movements staying behind for a few seconds constantly.
The very best part of the film was the sound design. Both sound effects, general audio, and especially the music were fantastic, most impressive. There was nothing to complain about in that regard, with the music just perfectly fitting the surreal vibe. A highlight for me was roughly halfway into the seventy five minutes movie where Luke (in what I assume is a dream sequence) encounters his missing sister singing am atmospheric song, with her face distorted.
I would say my personal biggest issue with this is that I just could not follow what on earth was happening. It seemed that Luke and Alan's stories were both taking place at the same place, though reading the synopsis afterwards it seems much of Luke's side of the film takes place within the context of a dream. It appeared that the house was perhaps sentient, either that or Alan was quite disturbed, as at several points he is shown talking to the twisted ghost of his father. The constant use of an insert shot of some type of rotting animal carcass with bugs crawling over during the first part of Alan's side of the film was a bit off putting, it wasn't really for me, but Alan himself was a strange character who was fun to see simply existing. I don't really understand where the story went, or what it was really trying to say, the IMDB tagline simply says 'A surreal horror film about greed and masculinity in American suburbia'.
On the one hand, Protanopia was quite impressive. From the somewhat basic text font used it is obvious this was low budget, but this is hidden very well with the variety of visual effects used constantly throughout. Then there is the soundtrack that was just perfect. I am hit and miss when it comes to more arty films, and as is apparent, I just could not follow what was happening here, leaving me confused, but not frustrated with the movie.
SCORE:
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