Krisha (2016)

Pretty Good

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

I admit it, too raw and intimate for me. The accompanying soundtrack makes it feel like a horror film. Which, in many ways, it is. And I hate horror films. It is a dysfunctional family drama set during Thanksgiving in Texas, after all. I feel like horror films work because they are detached from reality enough for us to, well, not walk out of the theater feeling depressed. This was a real life horror film. It definitely took an original approach to a genre film. Almost every scene has palpable tension. Atmosphere is on point. I found it difficult to be completely invested in the film. Well made, I can agree. But not my type of film.

Terrible movie. I saw many of the reviewers rated this movie because of its realism? The soundtrack punishes you the entire movie.And there was no substance to really follow. I'm usually all for these one-off, real-type movies (then again, if I wanted real life or somebody else problems, I wouldn't sit down in front of the TV to watch this nonsense).Sure.. go ahead, watch it. Don't say I didn't warn you. Whatever the length of the movie in wasted time.This was a complete waste of time.. and I've seen pretty terrible movies like that movie where Samuel Jackson is the bad neighbour? Yeah, this beat that out 1000x over.

This is not going anywhere. Annoying music, annoying people. Very superficial acting. Nothing looks professionally done. You can make a home movie of your own Thanksgiving dinner, it should be better. 5 minutes of watching would have been enough, I pushed to 40 and I still regret that decision. I give a 1 for the good looking dogs. So we get the trick : raise $14K online, film your own family at Thanksgiving dinner in your parent's house, spend the money on the dinner, cigarettes and booze, there we are : you've become a filmmaker. Next time clean the house too, raise $100 more for a maid. Even difficult to write 10 lines for IMDb. End of it.

Krisha, Trey Edward Shults' feature film debut, showed up at last year's Spirit Award screenings as well as this year's Gotham's Audience Awards. It's a very low-budget affair shot at Shults' parents home, with most of his family members and friends playing a fictional, dysfunctional family. The protagonist is also named Krisha, played by Shults' aunt in real life. His actual mother plays Krisha's sister and Shults himself plays Krisha's son.Incredibly, on Metacritic there are 27 positive reviews and only one mixed. Most of the critics were captivated by Shults' aunt's performance (her full name is Krisha Fairchild). When we first meet her, she hasn't been back at her sister's home in ten years, and initially ends up ringing the neighbor's doorbell by mistake.When Krisha finally wanders into the right house, we can tell right away there is something wrong with her by the reaction of the various family members, who appear to regard her with contempt. In many ways, Krisha is a black comedy (or farce), as Shults depicts the family members as passive-aggressive, doing their best to put on a good face towards an absentee relative who deep down is regarded (except by an almost senile grandmother) as a complete pariah.Krisha earns the family's contempt by her neurotic, self-destructive attitude, fueled by pills that she keeps hidden in a small locked box marked "private." It's alcohol, however, that pushes Krisha over the edge, and the family's passivity suddenly goes by the wayside when Krisha drops the Thanksgiving turkey on the kitchen floor (after continuously offering to help prepare the big bird, before it's served).Shults is more interested in depicting the humor of the family breakdown than making a case for the embattled Krisha, whose neuroticism is probably beyond any therapeutic assistance or repair. Thus all the sordid dysfunctional family members (including Krisha) live up to master critic Eric Bentley's dictum: that in farce, one is "permitted the outrage, without the consequences."The problem with all this is that Shults tips his hand very early as to what's going on. We "get" the idea just how neurotic Krisha is, and her exploits aren't very surprising (or humorous) after a while. The climax, which features the one-note humor of an extremely neurotic family member returning from exile--who sets off the relatives who banished her years ago--is not only predictable but not very consequential, in terms of the kind of humor we can expect from a more seasoned farcical script.I admire Shults for getting his project off the ground (especially by raising a nominal $14,000 via a Kickstarter campaign) but Krisha is nothing more than an exercise in "low stakes." Next time, hopefully, the fledgling director will aim for higher heights with both well-developed characters and a more clever plot, featuring substantially more humorous situations.