My god, I loved this. It’s hard to quantify how much I love this but I’ll definitely say this is one of my favorite “new to me” watches of the year. For those close to me with some knowledge of my tastes my two nearest reference points for films this reminded me of are Animal Instincts and Carnival of Souls. Gregory Dark meets Herk Harvey couldn’t be more my brand if it tried.
I sought this out for a few reasons; I wanted to find films that were exploring the same ideas and similar aesthetics to Gregory Dark’s 90s softcore output and as the 100 Horror Film in 92 Days Challenge is coming up I wanted to build a list of unconventional recommendations for folks looking to break out of a cycle of endless 80s slashers and modern grief monsters. Kayden Kross’ Drive is a horror picture.
Director Kayden Kross has set Drive in Los Angeles but it’s a Los Angeles that has teeth and exists in liminal reality. Reference points might be Lost Highway or Mulholland Drive. Kross and cinematographer Winston Henry wisely eschew the flat, drab high dynamic range that has become the standard of digital cinematography. As a result blacks resolve into endless inky darkness and whites burst with clarity and brilliance. Sets are lit elegantly to never demand both at the same time. The lighting forgoes the realistic, practical style and instead is motivated and dreamy. Giant splashes of pink, purple and blue erupt across the screen. In a pivotal scene halfway through the film a lowered garage door has had its panels replaced with smoky lucite so all that bleeds through is color and it pulses through a cycle of pinks and purples as the light source moves unseen. Just gorgeous.
The film opens with black title card with white text displaying a quote from Maggie Nelson’s The Art of Cruelty. Nelson’s book covers topics including the paintings of Francis Bacon, the Saw movies and Sylvia Plath. A later book of hers, The Argonauts is often cited as an authoritative piece on love and the mingling of desire and identity. It is this intertwining of Eros and Thanatos that Kross wants to draw our attention to and that interests her as a filmmaker.
Her star is the capable Angela White. I shouldn’t want to reflexively provide some indication of White’s credentials as an intellectual because that feeds into the broader cultural narrative of delegitimization for adult stars but she is insightful, brilliant and a careful observer of media and gender roles. White’s Master Thesis,”The Porn Performer: The Radical Potential of Pleasure in Pornography” was published in 2014. In a film about identity, insecurity and the horror of knowing the self there are many great choices from Kross and her lead. Gabbie Carter is cast as a young woman who works at the same office Angela and her husband’s characters. Angela delivers a nearly four minute improv monologue about comparing her body to Carter’s and how she desires Carter’s youth and intensity. Adding weight to the moment is the fact that Angela’s on screen husband is played by Kross’s real life husband, Manuel Ferrera. The power of letting both director and star’s fears and insecurities bleed into the scene give the moment a real weight.
The narrative is that White, after a long day at the office, is headed home but on the way is accosted by a fortune teller played by Maitland Ward. Ward keeps showing up and clever stage direction and costuming point to the twist that is revealed halfway through. At that point the film becomes a full tilt Odyssey and would only work if Angela White is a wonderfully expressive physical actor and she is.
The heart of the film is how close the desire for sex and death mingle and how that desire for touch and for release are driven by a deeper still desire, to know one’s self.
This movie is a wonder for anyone looking for a film centered on feminine desire written and directed by a woman and for anyone interested in how our inevitable death shapes our identities. Gorgeous to look at, extremely vulnerable truly scary in key moments. And yes, it’s very, very hot. Kross explores a variety of identities and dynamics in the sex and so if you come to this expecting nothing but vanilla heterosexual sex you’ll be shocked. Well worth your time.