Written, directed, and produced by Ian Tripp (Everybody Dies by the End), Sincerely Saul is an indie dark comedy psychological horror that is a slice of life for a man-child. Without much plot to worry about, this absurdist black and white injects life with its variety of weird and kooky characters.
Saul (Ryan Schafer - Everybody Dies by the End), is a 26 year old man who never really grew up. He lives with his terminally ill grandma (Mickey Faerch - Memory: The Origins of Alien), doesn't work, and is a member of a support group for involuntary male virgins. Him and his grandma have a love/hate relationship, he does care for her, but he is also adverse to 'borrowing' money off of her for his obsession with an online cam-girl and his desire to fulfil his perceived happiness needs.
Saul is a hard protagonist to like but even so he does have some redeeming qualities buried deep down. Being a comedy horror, I expected there would be a tipping point where the Napoleon Dynamite styled character would go on a bloody rampage. Much like a child however, Saul is all bark and no bite, ineffectually having tantrums rather than actually causing people physical harm. He is barely able to speak normally, acting like a sullen teenager when answering questions from the people he encounters in his life. These characters are an eccentric bunch of weirdos and odd-balls. From the 'friendly' Officer Porter (Karl Backus - Skin: The Movie) whose close relationship with his mother feels rather forced, to the long suffering comic book clerk (Ty Mabrey in his film debut), there is virtually no one here who comes across as normal. My favourite side character had to be the nerdy bow-tie vlogger that befriends Saul at one point. The interaction between Saul and his grandma was the strongest part of character development. From their strange relationship you get a sense that Saul is the way he is due to his family, the grandma at times seeming like an older mirror of the troubled man.
There isn't that much that happens, the film feeling like a snapshot of a few weeks of the protagonists life. He begins the movie trying to kill himself, and threatens to several times over the 95 minute runtime, but you get the sense it is all for show. I couldn't see how there could be a happy ending for such a dysfunctional man, the snapshot approach works in that there doesn't really need to be a resolution. The film ends with some characters in better positions, some characters in worse positions, but on the whole most characters have little to no growth to them; they are all too set in their ways. I liked how a potentially huge plot point of a vast forest fire that Saul inadvertently caused just bubbles away in a severe side plot, only occasionally referenced. This matches with the film's weird humour, it always felt funny in a round-about way. The horror mainly comes from the situation Saul has grown into, it was hard to see how this 'neckbeard' would be able to rise above his issues. A nightmare sequence towards the end features the most horror to be found here, the rest of the movie having a more drama focussed (though exaggerated) approach.
Sincerely Saul made for an interesting movie. The stripped back story combined with the stark black and white look made something that was different enough to keep my attention throughout despite not too much going on. Saul was a unique lead, definitely hard to like, but there was also something pathetically innocent about how he is in his miserable existence. Sincerely Saul was released on 29th September.
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