FilmArcade.net: Fantasia 2011: "Pop Skull" Review

Pop Skull
Year: 2009
Director: Adam Wingard
Stars: Lane Hughes, Hannah Hughes, Brandon Carrol
MPAA Rating: Not Rated
Studio: Halo 8 Entertainment
Running Time: 89 Mins

"Pop Skull is film that was released on DVD last year from Halo 8 Films. It's part of spotlight highlighting the work of director Adam Wingard, whose latest film ""What Fun We Were Having: 4 Stories About Date Rape" is having it's world premiere at this year's festival.

This is a repost and rewrite of my review from March 2010 . For more information on this film, you can visit the film's official website at: http://www.popskullthemovie.com/

“Pop Skull” has won grand jury prizes at the Indianapolis International Film festival and Boston Underground Film festival. It has also premiered at the AFI Film Festival and internationally at Rome Film Festival. Now the film has been on DVD for a couple of months now.

This shocking film is about Daniel, a young pill addict. He has increasingly become addictive to pills and drugs. His downward spiral gets ever more worst. He has to collide with deadly sprits that begin to inhabit his house and haunt him. Soon Daniel discovers, the home holds a deadly secret that was the scene of a gruesome murder. As the force’s presence grows stronger, Daniel must stop these forces or else those murders are doomed to repeat again and destroy his life.

There are few films that you would be guaranteed to come out feeling like that you’ve just been on one bad acid trip. This was one of those films. It never lets up, as this becomes an acid trip in the first few minutes and never stops. It’s one of those films where you’ll watch the whole film and be horrified or you’ll just turn it off and never look back.

“Pop Skull” relies mostly on Adam Wingard’s direction. The direction here was very good. He goes for a very chaotic approach, when directing and shooting some of the film’s most horrifying images. He makes the imagery very dark through using various techniques. Some of the scenes were either full of color or dark and very bleak. This is where the acid trip analogy comes into play. Wingard also blends some of the film’s images together to give its surreal tone. He blends them to give the viewer an experience that frightens your senses and mind. Wingard also does a good job making performances work within the context of the story, as they were very dark especially the lead performance. I was sold on the fact that his character is on a downward spiral and losing control of himself. The performance helps makes this film, very effective.

The screenplay written by Wingard, Lane Hughes and E.L. Katz does a good job creating a level of suspense and shocking images. One of the reasons was that the writers did a good job, they focus around a character, by going into the character’s state of mind. By focusing on all of his problems and how his addiction to pills has changed the way that he looks at everything, as it gives a frightening aspect into how addictions destroy people. The writers also did a very good job making some of the film’s scares works. The reason that they work, the images come out of nowhere. All of this bizarre imagery grabs your attention to the point that you want to know how this is going to play out.

This is a very well crafted and shocking film. “Pop Skull” is a frightening and visually horrifying look at drug addiction and how it destroys people.

Review Rating: Five Stars

Upcoming Screenings:

July 24th, 2011 / 5:00 pm / J.A. De Seve Theater / Montreal Canada