Drew
is sort of like a cross-between the alien in The Hidden and the legend of the Wandering Jew (in its more
ideologically benign manifestations). To stay alive, he must hop from body to
body, using up the vessel, but each time it tears up his soul a little more. He
is looking for redemption, but he only seems to find more pain and produce ever
higher body counts in Justin McConnell’s Lifechanger
(trailer
here),
which screens during this year’s FrightFest in the UK.
When
we first meet Drew, he is in a woman’s body, killing her nosy husband. Fortunately,
he has years of experience disposing of bodies. He takes no sadistic pleasure
from any of this—quite the contrary. It is simply a cold, hard question of
survival. His host bodies expire quickly. He can slow down the decay process
with antibiotics or speed it up with cocaine, but one way or another, he will
be moving on soon.
The
one constant is his eternal monologue, voiced by genre veteran Bill Oberst Jr.
Outwardly, Drew will take the forms of men and women of varying ages,
ethnicities, and socio-economic backgrounds. He also takes on all their
baggage, most definitely starting with their personal relationships. For quite a
while, the successive Drews have been trying to find a way to get close to a
certain someone from a much early “lifechange.” As a result, there has been quite
a bit of turnover in the patronage of her favorite neighborhood tavern.
In
some ways, Lifechanger is a darker,
deadlier cousin to the fantastical Korean romance, The Beauty Inside. Even though each thesp playing Drew is very
different, the cumulative effect of their work is quite impressive. Obviously,
McConnell also clearly deserves credit for being an actor’s genre film
director. He manages to keep everyone in the battery of Drews mentally and emotionally
compatible, while maintaining the sad but sinister vibe.
Arguably,
Lifechanger could just as easily be
categorized as a thriller or a dark urban fantasy, but it probably makes sense
to call it horror, because fans of the genre are probably the most receptive to
something a little off-center and hard to classify. There are certainly enough
dead bodies to hang with the horror crowd, plus karma is mean as a snake.
There
is no weak link in the chain of Drews, but Rachel VanDuzer and Jack Foley
definitely stand out, because they get the baton at key dramatic moments. As a
result, they both really bring out the sad, acutely human Larry Talbot side of
Drew.
In
many ways, Lifechanger reconnects
with the more empathetic horror tradition of interpreting monsters as tragic,
lonely figures alienated from society (the Wolfman, the Invisible Man, etc.). It
is smart, mature genre filmmaking, with very little special effects (unless you
count the decent supply of blood). Very highly recommended, Lifechanger screens this Friday (8/24)
and Sunday (8/26) as part of this year’s FrightFest UK.
