Amazing Fantasy Fest Coverage
Florence review
The world premiere of Florence featured a funny, mind-bending, personal tale of revenge.
Festival reviews will not contain spoilers.
Florence
Directed by Skip Shea and Luigi Cozzi
Written by Skip Shea
Starring Aurora Grabill, Tiziana Guarini, Demetri Kasperson, Patrick Bracken, Dynamo Marz, Diana Porter and Damien Gaudet
Florence Review
The World Premiere of Skip Shea’s Florence kicked off day three of Amazing Fantasy Fest. The darkly comedic revenge story screened following the World Premiere of director Kristen Skeet’s short film Agency. The short reunited several stars of Skeet’s festival selected feature Slasher Days of Summer. Shea took part in a Q&A following Florence where he discussed the film’s origins, his history with abuse in the catholic church, how Starcrash director Luigi Cozzi became involved in the project…and to break down an unforgettable six-minute-long scene in the film.
Florence is the kind of religious horror film I can get behind. Usually, horror movies that contain a religious element tend to use faith as a crutch. Countless versions of the person who loses their faith and must find it to overcome blah blah blah. It worked to perfection in The Exorcist. It has worked less and less ever since. Florence…goes in another direction. Instead of extolling the virtues of faith overcoming evil…it brings bloody revenge to the evil done by religious people. Namely, the Catholic Church.
You can probably guess what crimes are being punished here. Writer/director Skip Shea has brought his personal history with the church to his work before. You can feel how personal it is in specific scenes. One unforgettable scene of revenge, in particular. Trust me. You can’t miss it. What’s impressive is how uniquely Shea tells his revenge tale. This is a messed-up movie, sure…but it’s also an incredibly funny one. It seems like it plays out in non-sequiturs until everything starts to shape into form.
Florence (Aurora Grabill) is as close to a protagonist as the movie named after has. She guides us through the strange, purposely disjointed, narrative. Sometimes she’s doing stand-up comedy. Sometimes she’s a psychiatrist. At times she serves as a surrogate interviewer of sorts. At least once she appears to be commenting on the film that we’re watching…or at least reacting to a scene of it playing out. It’s wild. It also makes a shocking amount of sense when the story pulls all its dangling strings together.
Oh…there’s also a masked killer on the loose. Normally, that would be the lead story in a movie review. Shea’s narrative sensibilities steal the show, however. He finds entertainment in the darkest corners of his story. That six minute revenge scene? It takes a completely uncomfortable action and alternates it between laughs and utter disbelief. Shea commented that the sequence was shot as is as a sort of response to the sexual torture traditionally reserved for female characters. It’s hard to also not view it as a purposely drawn-out response to the long history of Church related sexual violence.
You’ve probably guessed by now that the killer’s targets are Priests guilty of such crimes. It stems from a Priest’s home for pedophile recovery that was, believe it or not, a thing that actually existed. Shea has spent years trying to bring that story to light. In Florence, he utilizes it to surprising effect. This isn’t a dramatic retelling of a specific horrific event. It’s a wildly entertaining and original work that feels like the final stage of someone dealing with their trauma. Shea said in the post-screening Q&A that he’ll be moving on from the theme after several short and feature length films. Florence feels like moving on. It gives the antagonists their comeuppance while finding ways to laugh at how messed up the whole ordeal is.
It won’t be difficult to ascertain who the masked killer is. There aren’t a lot of suspects running around. It doesn’t matter that you’ll know before the reveal. Florence keeps you guessing in other, more original ways. It’s almost like a secret mystery. You won’t know how these pieces are meant to fit together…or even if they will. You aren’t looking for answers because Shea keeps the questions buried beneath dad jokes and detached commentary. It’s a brilliant way to tell a story.
Part of Florence was shot in Italy. Shea couldn’t get over there during the pandemic to shoot it. Enter Luigi Cozzi. You would think that a different director with different sensibilities and style would disrupt the flow Shea is bringing to the story. It only deepens the effect of the film’s detached from reality style. A unique production to say the least.
Scare Value
If the events in Florence feel personal…it’s because they are. Skip Shea finds humor in this story of deserved revenge. Florence is downright hilarious when it wants to be. It’s structured in a way that you won’t get your head around until it wants you to. Things come together right around the time one of the longest, most uncomfortable, and… yes…hilarious, revenge scenes in movie history hits the screen. From stand-up comedy to psychiatry sessions to brutal, violent revenge…Florence has it all.
