You know the film. It’s a film you have never heard of. The cast might be composed of actors you know and love or complete unknowns. A documentary that sounds interesting about a topic you might like. You stumble across it on streaming and wonder if it will be worth two hours of your time. This series will be devoted to reviewing films like these, the strange items that pop up when you are looking for a flick on the streaming service of your choice. This is “We Found It On Streaming”
During our celebration of Saturday Night Live‘s 50th anniversary, we will be devoting this feature to films found on streaming with some ties to the sketch program. This installment covers an indie horror film with former SNLer Chris Redd in a supporting role.
FILM: Scare Me
Release Date: October 1, 2020
Run Time: 92 Minutes.
Streaming Service(s): Shudder, Tubi
Rating: Not Rated
Fred (Josh Ruben) is wannabe writer who has rented out a secluded mountain cabin in order to get some work done on his novel. While on a walk to clear his head, he comes upon a woman, jogging. It turns out that the woman is also a writer who has rented a neighboring cabin. Not just any writer, but Fanny Allie (Aya Cash), who wrote the celebrated horror novel, Venus. He tries to create a bond with her over them both being writers, but it rebuked and turned off by her curt and brusk manner.
Later that night, while Fred is trying to write, the power goes out. Fanny appears after the lights go out in her cabin. The pair decide to hang out together until the lights come back on and tell each other scary stories to pass the time. But as the hours go on, fantasy and reality mix, and it becomes hard to determine where fact and fiction begins and ends.
Scare Me is the brainchild of Josh Ruben, who wrote, directed and produced it. I first noticed Ruben one the Dropout TV shows Make Some Noise and Game Changer. He is a gifted and skilled comedian, especially with voices and characters. This serves him well here as Fred acts out his stories. Cash, who you’ll know from You’re the Worst and The Boys, also does well in this aspect, holding her own with Rubin in telling stories and also forming Fanny into a complex and intriguing character. Ruben’s direction is also very good. The way he subtly introduces elements of the character’s stories–silhouettes of trees in the background here, a spotlight for a singer there–into the staid cabin scene is very effective. He also realizes that a writer stuck in a snowy, remote cabin will bring out The Shining references, so Ruben under cuts them by referencing it himself. That was a nice touch.
Where the film works best is showing the life of the writer, a horror movie in and of itself. The panic of coming up with ideas on the fly. Fearing that your ideas will not be good enough. Fearing that your ideas will be stolen. The pain of getting feedback. The pain of giving feedback. The jealousy of someone less talented than you becoming successful. The insecurity that you might not be a talented as you think. The moral dilemma of using some real person’s life as fodder for your stories. All of these ring true for writers and aspiring writers in the audience.
Where the film falters is in the lead up to the climax. I am not going to spoil the film for you. But it is a horror movie so you know there will be horror-like stuff at the end, and these characters will be involved in it. The film was building towards this end, with just Fanny and Fred acting out their stories and, in the process, revealing more and more about themselves. Then Carlo shows up.
Carlo is a pizza delivery person played by Chris Redd. He comes in halfway during the film and is invited in by the pair. He takes part in the telling of a couple of stories, then leaves before the inevitable conclusion. And he is a completely disruptive influence on the narrative.
I don’t know why Ruben decided to include this character. Maybe he thought people were getting tired of seeing just the two characters on screen and wanted to shake things up. Or maybe he thought Redd, two years into his SNL stint at the time, would be famous enough to help the film get picked up. Or maybe he felt he needed a third character to make some of the stories Fred and Fanny were telling work better. Or maybe he felt introducing a character so late would add to the run time so it could get to feature length. I don’t know. But whatever the thought was, he was wrong. Carlo pretty much derails the story.
And this is not a shot against Redd. He does fine in the role. He is funny, charismatic, and does well making Carlo seem like a fully formed person. It’s not that Redd was a poor choice to play the character, it’s that the character would have been better off not being in the film at all.
Because as soon as Carlo leaves, that’s when things start to go south. And it results in a tonal shift that is enough to give you whiplash. Ruben does plant the seeds for the denouement earlier in the film, and, if you are being generous, during Carlo’s time on screen. But the foreshadowing is not enough to make the finale completely effective, in my opinion. You need to sell the conflict of the climax more leading up to it. But since Carlo was added to the story, we were denied the slow burn the ending deserved.
Scare Me is a creepy display of the horrors of storytelling, buoyed by the performance of its leads, that can’t quite make it to the finish line intact. But it was good enough to make me want to look at more of Ruben’s work. Coincidentally, that will happen next week in this feature, so come back then.
Have you found a film on streaming that you’d like us to look at? Leave it in the comments and it might appear in a future installment of this feature.
