Debut: 'Death is a Soft Limit'
The arthouse film is a delicate film to pull off. As much as these films are praised for their uniqueness, they are also criticized for their perceived self-indulgent and audience-isolating style. Unfortunately, Death is a Soft Limit (2023) falls into the latter category.
Death is a Soft Limit, is written and directed by Corrin Evans, a filmmaker who self-describes her style as exploring the supernatural and concepts of death and desire. Her short film follows an artist who, after a near-death experience, becomes obsessed with recreating a vision he had by any means necessary.
Evans’ style is uniquely her own as the final product feels self-indulgent and muddled. The film’s almost non-stop shaky hand-held shots and frequent use of pink and green rotating lights fail to elevate the dramatic horror short film into anything of note. Rather it gives the production an amateur feeling and almost reminds one of watching an overly self-indulgent student film during a student cinema guild screening at a school.
Student films can be good, but they can also be less than stellar as the up-and-coming filmmakers battle their egos versus what will make for an engaging short film. This film falls squarely in the less-than-stellar section as the 11-minute film feels like it is trying to be more than it is despite some intriguing concepts being present.
Stylistically, the film could benefit from more still shots. There is about one scene in the entire short film where the camera is visibly immobile in this quiet moment, viewers should feel invited into the moment, to get to know the two characters and why they have reconnected after so much time apart.
What should be an interesting character-driven moment is interrupted with cuts to the artist contorting his body while bathed in rotating green light. Evans is trying to convey insanity and obsession but the awkward movements of the actor make it unintentionally comical. If Evans had utilized faster jump cuts to catch the viewer off guard, this feeling of madness would have been better conveyed and the viewer would’ve been left wary of what the next shot could hold. Evans' decision to slowly cut to the “insanity” and then hold on to it for far too long fails to produce any feeling other than uncomfortable comedy.
The throbbing bass which undercuts almost the entire film is also unnecessary. Strong non-diegetic sound should guide the audience to a feeling, Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) is a prime example of doing this successfully. The iconic string section presented in the musical score delicately plants unease and suspense in the viewer’s mind without insisting upon itself. The bass line presented in Death is a Soft Limit is the polar opposite, its impact lessening because it never seems to stop. If the score had perhaps started up during these brief moments of insanity during the conversation between the two characters, the contrast in visual and sound would have made for a more effective atmosphere.
What makes these flaws frustrating is the intriguing heart of the film, two friends, separated after one rose to fame as an artist while the other found moderate success as an author, reconnect. In their conversation the artist reveals he had that in a substance-induced moment, he had a vision of someone he, presumably, lost long ago. This idea of how far one would go to see their departed loved one again is interesting. However, Evans doesn’t seem interested in exploring the emotional side of loss and how that can drive someone to obsession and madness, rather she seems to prefer creating an aesthetic over feeling, the success of which is highly debatable.
In one jarring moment of aesthetic over substance, during the green and pink lit finale where the artist convinces his friend to beat him to near death so that he can have the vision again, the friend curls his fingers together to form a fist, revealing the tattooed word “fate” across his knuckles. Get it? The artist’s fate is rooted in violence and ultimate destruction, incredibly subtle.
Death is a Soft Limit suffers from this continued pursuit of aesthetic over substance, ignoring the interesting heart of the story in favor of a pulsing bass line and flashing lights. Any promise of an intriguing and unsettling premise is cast aside by this rave aesthetic that leaves the viewer both annoyed and wanting more.
