let me tell you a story about the great blobbie war of 2003…
blobbie wars is NOT stupid.
Ok ok… new idea! I feel like my content has no structure, and while that is immensely fun for me, it might be a bit too chaotic to sustain an audience. (Insert tangent about creatures of habit, craving routine, and other half-baked thoughts that will make me sound like I know what I’m talking about…)
SO.
Welcome to Sunday Scaries(TM). From now on, I will be reviewing one random movie that I’ve been meaning to watch every god damn Sunday and posting a review (ideally also on Sunday. Not off to a good start…) The rest of my content will be focused on new releases and deep-dives. Groovy? Anywho…
They Look Like People is a hidden gem. It is raw, gut-wrenching, and utterly suspenseful. What makes this movie so unsettling is how disgustingly real it is. As someone who has experienced first-hand the challenges of a loved one going through mental illness and psychosis, this film captures the essence of the experience horrifically.
It might be hard to imagine, but some of the brightest people I know have gone completely off the deep end. It can happen to anybody. Beyond the mystery and suspense, the real root of this story is the way mental illness can creep into your everyday life and impact those around you. That is real horror.
The film follows two close childhood friends, Wyatt and Chris, who reconnect as they cope with their separately failed engagements. Basically just two dudes meandering through life as they process their grief in obscenely different ways.
I found Wyatt and Chris’ relationship so relatable. And frankly, I’d call both of their experiences in this movie horrific. Wyatt’s grief has unlocked a more concerning mental illness, providing an awfully convenient framework to explain his growing distrust in humanity. Chris tries to bury his grief through fake machismo and being really really ridiculously good-looking. Both responses ultimately being self-destructive in different ways.
We must all learn to confront grief in our lives. It ain’t pretty, but until we learn to truly accept and process it, the ways we try to bury it will only tear us further apart. To me, this is the hidden message of this film and I’m still semi-fucked up about it.
To call this story “heartbreaking” wouldn’t nearly do it justice.
They Look Like People is a quick watch (only 80 min) that I cannot recommend enough. It also has the courage not to answer some fundamental questions throughout the plot, which adds to the sense of dread at the film’s close. I wish more directors had the balls to pull this off the way Perry Blacksheer did. This one’s gonna stick with me for a long time.
You can’t spell paranoid schizophrenic without an…
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