Writer and director Naomi Jaye has taken the unpromising story of a soft-spoken young librarian and turned it into a small wonder of a film, eloquent and captivating. Britt Lower (Helly in Severance) is subtle but magnetic as Miriam, who works in a neighborhood library in Toronto, eating lunch alone every day in a nearby park. She seems content with her quiet life, even when wafting a little robotically through the library stacks in her oversized sweater. Whether her aura suggests sadness or complacency we don’t yet know.

The film has a definite narrative trajectory, as Miriam begins a relationship with Janko (Tom Mercier), a Slovenian taxi diver and artist who eats lunch on the park bench across from her. But its distinctive quality comes from how deftly Jaye balances that story with Miriam’s inner life. She delicately moves us in and out of Miriam’s memories and observances, with an occasional poetic touch, yet the film never loses its tether to the real world.

Much of that reality depends on Lower’s layered performance. Even when Miriam is enigmatic, Lower suggests the depth and, as it turns out, grief beneath her self-protective calm. The tone itself is not grim though. In voiceover, Miriam wryly describes the library’s regular visitors, filing reports on any disruptive event.  Deadpan, she describes Suitcase Man, who always carries one, Fainting Man, who often does, and Unusually Pale Female Patron.

The odd, almost fantastical events kick in gradually. Miriam discovers letters stashed in books and signed Rigoletto, as in the opera her father took her to when she was a child. “I am Rigoletto and I will not be doing any more suffering,” one reads. Others seem to be explicitly about Miriam, referencing her movements through the library.

This plot thread doesn’t play out as a detective story, even though Miriam’s boss and a police officer also read the letters, so we know they exist. Jaye treats it as a psychological mystery, part of the key to Miriam. Her father is the touchstone. We don’t learn until nearly halfway into the film that he has died, although we have seen him in Miriam’s memory. He sits in the garage surrounded by books piled to the ceiling, the image sending an unspoken signal that something is off. But she tells Janko he is alive and selling insurance.

Mercier’s performance also reflects the film’s understated tone perfectly. Janko is just as soft-spoken as Miriam, but more direct and open than she can be. He nicknames her Darkest Miriam, but his own paintings include a textured, entirely black canvas. As a couple they seem like a perfect fit.   

The film is based on a 2009 novel by Martha Baillie called The Incident Report, composed entirely of reports Miriam has filed. Darkest Miriam is far less elliptical, yet it is also comfortable with leaving things unexplained, allowing viewers to piece together what they will. Questions and strange events begin to pile up. Riding her bike home one evening Miriam falls into a construction hole, and, unharmed, looks up at the night stars. While getting checked at the hospital the next day, she is asked questions she’d obviously rather not answer, including whether she’d ever had suicidal thoughts. The camera is close on Lower’s unmoving face and pained expression, as Miriam stares silently ahead.

Jaye is a Toronto-based installation artist as well as a filmmaker with one previous feature, The Pin, (2013) but is scarcely known in the U.S. Darkest Miriam displays a sure sense of when to move the camera fluidly and when to let it sit, when to let images speak for themselves. Miriam seduces Janko by stopping on her way out of his apartment, turning to face him and matter-of-factly taking off her clothes as if she has simply made a decision. The film is full of risky choices that work. Miriam is often seen though windows or silhouetted against a doorway.

Between sequences, Jaye sometimes includes close-ups of flowers and plants in the park, once cutting from the darkness of Miriam’s father’s garage to the bright garden colors. In less capable hands this would all be pretentious, but Jaye maneuvers beautifully, using those touches just enough to evoke the mysteries of Miriam’s life.     

There is a dramatic turn at the end that we don’t see coming, and Lower allows us to feel Miriam’s deep emotional pain, yet the film ends with Miriam pointed toward the future. That mix of the tragic and the hopeful is just the kind of off-kilter balance that makes the film so exceptional and compelling. Charlie Kaufman has lent his name to the project as an executive producer, and while there is a definite sympathy between his imaginative approach and hers, Jaye’s artistry comes through as purely hers, a true discovery.

#AMFAD: All My Friends Are Dead is a modern take on the slasher sub-genre making its World Premiere at Tribeca. A group of friends are headed to the biggest music festival of the year. They rent an Airbnb and prepare for a wild time involving sex and drugs, along with the mandatory posting and live streaming. They soon find themselves the target of a vicious killer who begins to gruesomely take them out one by one.

Slashers have the luxury of being able to follow a formula and still be very fun. #AMFAD certainly has the pattern down. The group includes a stoner, a horned up lothario, and a conceited “hot chick”. But writers John Baldecchi, Jessica Sarah Flaum, and Josh Sims put everything through a modern filter. Guy (Jack Doupe-Smith) may like to indulge in recreational assistance, but none of the others are adverse to drugs, either. A police officer even helpfully points out, some of the things Jack does are legal. For their part, L.B. (Julian Haig, Riverdale) livestreams his sexcapades and Mona (Jennifer Ens, Chapelwaite) is an influencer. The movie appeals to longtime genre fans without alienating newcomers.

It is not just the characters that have been updated for the 21st century. The energy and tone are fast paced and fun. Director Marucs Dunstan  may present a familiar story, but it is done in a lively way that keeps surprising the audience. Colors are creatively used and quick cuts amp up the scares. The long cold open is an interesting decision, that ends up being more strange than anything else. Still, it adds to the overall chaotic nature of #AMFAD.

Kills are always one of the most scrutinized part of any slasher and they are well done here. A mix of disgusting, shocking, and funny, #AMFAD does an excellent job of never taking itself too seriously without taking away from the horror of what is happening. Gore hounds will definitely be impressed with what they see. 

#AMFAD is an excellent modern take on the Final Girl. The days of the puerile and too good to be true Final Girl ended long ago, but the trope has been slightly altered more than it has actually evolved. They may be more willing to have sex or partake in a drink, but the idea of the Final Girl has changed very little over the decades. 

Sarah (Jade Pettyjohn, Little Fires Everywhere) is the biggest leap the character has seen since Sidney Prescott was first harassed by Ghostface. She is not afraid to party with her more reckless friends, yet she is still the voice of reason. That being said, her motivations seem murky at times – she seems willing to spend time with L.B. In another scene, she has not issues using someone for a ride. In other words, she has the type of complexity that Final Girls are never allowed to have. The climatic scenes involving the Final Girl will likely catch anyone watching off-guard.

#AMFAD: All My Friends Are Dead is a fantastic addition to the slasher sub-genre. It is the right combination of funny, exciting, and disgusting that only the best slashers are able to pull off. Nothing ever feels out of place in a plot that is able to touch on heavy topics and still lean into its sillier aspects. It is easily one of the best slashers to come around in years.  

Tribeca Festival takes from June 5 – June 16. The full lineup can be found HERE.

[Tribeca ’24] ‘#AMFAD: All My Friends Are Dead’: Modern take on slashers is the best in years

#AMFAD: All My Friends Are Dead

#AMFAD: All My Friends Are Dead is a fantastic addition to the slasher sub-genre. It is the right combination of funny, exciting, and disgusting that only the best slashers are able to pull off.

Great chemistry between cast enhances the already fun characters.

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Outrageous kills

Best Final Girl in years

Ending gets a little too twist heavy

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I have never been more confused by the reception of a film than I am by Netflix’s new comedy-drama Hit Man, a film by longtime director Richard Linklater. The movie is scoring big with critics (who aren’t named Erik Kain) and audiences alike, and over at Reddit, the reviews are glowing.

I am baffled. I am utterly mystified. It’s like the entire world went crazy and left me—and just a small handful of others—behind. What’s going on? The critics must be crazy, sure, but the audiences along with them this time!

Usually, when I really like something that the rest of my peers seem to hate, the audiences also tend to like it. Or I see the opposite divide, and critics really like something—like The Acolyte—but audiences can’t stand it. I usually find myself on one side of a controversial movie, either agreeing with critics and disagreeing with audiences—like The Green Knight—or the other way around.

It is a very rare day when a movie is beloved by both critics and audiences that I find myself standing over here scratching my head and asking “Why?” Why do people like this movie so much? It’s . . . really not good. And hey, maybe if this was a debut picture from some starry-eyed newcomer who had never been behind a camera before, written by a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed brand-new screenwriter, I could cut it some slack. But Linklater directed Dazed and Confused over 30 years ago, and School Of Rock and Boyhood and Before Sunrise (and the other two films in that trilogy) and plenty of other classics.

This feels like amateur hour to me. As I noted in my review, it feels like three different films awkwardly stitched together: The oddball comedy, where Glen Powell’s character Gary Johnson dresses up in silly costumes and takes on goofy personas to hoodwink criminals in his fake hit man act; the rom-com bit (that critic Jason Fraley hilariously described as “Fifty Shades Of Gary”); and the final fake film noir bit that really convinced me that this movie had no clue what it wanted to be. For a film about identity, Hit Man has none.

So why do all these critics and moviegoers have such a crush on it? Is it the handsome, easy charm of leading man Glen Powell? Is it the sizzling good looks of Adria Arjona? At least Powell gets to be funny. Arjona is basically a character without any personality. She’s given no backstory, no life to explore, no character development. She just shows up and looks hot. And in the third act, when she had the opportunity to surprise us as a ruthless femme fatale, it’s all a fakeout. She’s just a damsel in distress, after all—albeit a murderous one.

I don’t get it. I also don’t mean to belabor the point, but I’ve just never witnessed anything like this before. This is a 7/10 on a good day. I’d give it two stars out of four, feeling generous. If I’d seen this in theaters and you’d asked me to give you a prediction on its Rotten Tomatoes score, I’d say 65% with critics and maybe 70% with audiences. And that’s not because it’s a good movie, but because it’s an easy, mostly feel-good movie with attractive leads. What gives?

Here’s my video review of the film:

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