Anacoreta review
Anacoreta uses meta-horror to blur the lines between its own fiction and reality.
New movie reviews will not contain spoilers.
Anacoreta
Directed by Jeremy Schuetze
Written by Jeremy Schuetze and Matt Visser
Starring Antonia Thomas, Jeremy Schuetze, Matt Visser, Jesse Stanley and Ben Gulliver
Anacoreta Review
The first thing you might notice when looking up Anacoreta (possibly to discover what the title means) is that it is often accompanied by the release year 2022. As it is just hitting VOD this week…you might worry that this is a bad sign. Movies that sit around for years generally do so for a reason. Now, I don’t know why Anacoreta had such a long wait between its film festival debut and a proper release…but I can tell you that it isn’t a question of quality. Anacoreta (confusing name and all) is a pretty great movie.
Anacoreta is the title of both this film…and an unfinished movie within its story. The story of Anacoreta looms over what’s happening. All the characters in Anacoreta use their real names for the extra level of realism…but it makes explaining this part kind of difficult. The director of the unfinished film, Jeremy (Jeremy Schuetze…who is also the director of this movie. I told you it was difficult), heads out to a cabin in the woods to shoot an experimental horror film. He has a reputation as a difficult director…which is why the in-universe Anacoreta was never finished.
It doesn’t take long to see why Jeremy is difficult to work with. He springs several unplanned surprises on his cast to garner genuine reactions. This, understandably, pisses everyone off. Including his co-writer Matt (Matt Visser…who, you guessed it, co-wrote this movie) who feels out of the loop on Jeremy’s intentions. His girlfriend, Antonia (Antonia Thomas) is a working actress waiting to hear about a job that she really wants…and threatens to put a stop to Jeremy’s production. He doesn’t like that one bit. Jesse (Jesse Stanley) is the fourth member of the troop that’s supposed to end up on screen in the new film…which is being shot by a cameraman and sound technician. At all times.
Yes, Anacoreta is technically a found footage movie. I don’t know why I wrote technically…the entire film is comprised of on the fly footage shot by a character controlled camera. But it rarely feels like a found footage movie. Even when the group is hiking through the woods and setting up camp at night…Anacoreta manages to avoid the trappings that make found footage so divisive. Having a solid reason for the footage being shot is always a great start…but the movie uses it in ways that make sense from start to finish. It hasn’t gone found footage out of simple necessity…it makes the format an important part of its storytelling. That’s a hard trick to pull off.
What’s even harder to pull off is the way Anacoreta incorporates its meta-horror concept. This is a very clever movie that blurs the lines between reality and fiction beautifully. First…it blurs the line between our reality and its reality. With the director and co-writer and actors all playing versions of themselves…it’s easy to buy that their world takes place in the real one. The real fun comes from not being able to tell what parts of its story are scenes being shot for the movie…and genuine issues happening behind the scenes. Because there is no “behind the scenes” when everything is being shot…and everyone is playing themselves.
The internal plot of the story they’re setting out to tell would make for an effective found footage movie in its own right. They find an old manuscript that leads them to a spooky urban legend. The characters inevitably get caught up in it…but is it the characters from the movie…or the characters making the movie? When Jesse suffers from migraines and sleepwalks herself into danger…is that happening to Jesse the actress…or Jesse the character she’s playing? Is Jeremy causing chaos for the group as the director of the film or a character in the film he’s directing? As he directs the film you’re watching?
There are fun moments with the format too…it’s not all used to twist up your mind. The usage of Antonia Thomas’ American accent has a couple of bits I found entertaining. It’s about as meta as you can get. Thomas is a British actress who uses an American accent when her character calls for it…like in her most famous role as Claire in The Good Doctor. So, this Antonia is also a British actress donning an American accent for this film within a film…but she drops it to have a “real” argument with Jeremy about something that happens during the shoot. I put real in quotes because…is it real? Or is it part of the movie within a movie? Thomas is excellent here, by the way.
Anacoreta has a lot of fun with us not being able to make that distinction. Fun…in a meta-horror sense. Not in a laughing at itself (or you) kind of way. This isn’t a comedy…though it has some dark insights into the guerilla filmmaking process that you may find funny anyway. Because they feel real. That’s the most important thing to pull off in a found footage movie. If you feel like what you’re watching is real…you can laugh at it or be scared by it much more easily. Anacoreta takes it a step farther by making you question if even the fake parts could be real. It doesn’t tell you where the line is…but it’s jumping back and forth across it over and over again.
Scare Value
Anacoreta is a clever meta-horror film. It doesn’t go for the easy laugh or jump scare. Instead, it presents a world you’re never going to fully get a handle on. Confusion is king. You can’t trust anything as it’s happening because you don’t know if the story is trying to fool you, the director is trying to fool his cast, or…this is all actually happening. What you do know is the group is shooting a spooky little movie that Anacoreta then builds an interesting meta-movie on top of. You can enjoy both without ever having to be sure which one you’re watching from moment to moment.
4/5
