Reverse Shot A different angle on moving images—past, present, and future

Shot in fall 2019 and originally set for 2020 release, The Forever Purge can’t be taken as a comment on the events of January 6, 2021. All the same, it is a legitimate (and/or opportunistic) ne plus ultra take on the political and social polarization and paranoid atmosphere of the Trump era.

These are not castaways, but spirits in purgatory, their earthly possessions scattered around them like unwieldy memories of a past life. It is by mining the fantasy lives, the dreams and desires, of these preternaturally entwined women that Campion empowers them, makes them flesh and bone.

Despite the brouhaha it caused upon its premiere, the film cannot and should not be reduced to the sensation around it. What’s most radical about it remains intact all these decades later: its aesthetic ambition and its willingness to plunge viewers into a conceptual gambit left completely up to us to decode.

The story of American identity in the 21st century cannot be told without acknowledging that social media has shifted the ways we talk, interact, and forge communities.

It is a narrative reframing that suggests not empowerment from disempowerment, but rather, redemption through the redefinition of acceptable terms of success. And by overturning the traditional power fantasy, a sympathetic understanding of identity disorders emerges.

New logistical work-arounds sought to overcome the difficulties of physically congregating; each decision about tone could trigger dozens of questions. Are the problems we are experiencing self-contained within the pandemic, or perennial?

The curators ask in the program notes, Can remembrance fix a broken world? At the core of this inquiry into the world, and the status of the human within its historical, sociopolitical, technological, and ecological parameters, lies the emphasis on feeling.

It was a film for peers of mine whose burgeoning selfhoods hinged on things more consequential than cinephilia. But watching the film now, I am newly surprised by how grounded I feel in the everyday world it transcends.

There was a fair amount of expectation for this year’s Midnight selections to contain the next iteration of meaningful, shocking, or gossip-inspiring titles that could also be talked about as layered, complex examinations of real-world issues.

In their ambivalence and open-endedness, these films paradoxically brought me closer to a kind of emotional release than any other films in the festival, managing to capture our current state of uninterrupted dread and malaise in a way that feels comfortingly familiar.

This year there wasn’t as much awkwardness in the form of glitchy, poorly synced Zoom interviews, as one might have expected, though the same can’t be said for the sometimes verbose, overly grave ways that some filmmakers talked about their projects.

Our annual awards continued: Best Anti-Biopic, Best Actress, Best Pandemic Activity, Most Unexpected Heartthrob, Most Unexpected Revelations, Dear Film Comment, and more.

Reverse Shot's annual awards, including Best Godard Remix, Worst Idea, Best Ensemble, Most Numbing, The Thrill-Isn't-Gone Award, Best Structuring Absences, Best Old White Male, and more

From the vantage of our quarantined silos, we’ve had occasion to reflect upon how and where we gather, particularly in independent film circles, and whether they might stand for improvement.