Shapeless Review
Shapeless (2021) Film Review from the 20th Annual Tribeca Film Festival, a movie directed by Samantha Aldana, and starring Kelly Murtagh, Bobby Gilchrist, Jamie Neumann, Erika Ashley, Gralen Bryant Banks, Marco Dapper, Craig Leydecker, Zardis Nichols, Ernest Wells, Jo-Ann Robinson, Sherri Eakin, Deneen Tyler, Casandra Corrales, and Tenea Intriago. Watching director Samantha Aldana’s new film Shapeless is quite an interesting experience. For those who have seen the great director David Lynch’s work, this new film can remind one of the experience watching one of Lynch’s more unique, abstract pictures like Lost Highway. Such films are not always accessible to the tastes of the mainstream movie-going public but have their fans. Shapeless will find an audience and it deserves to. Its star and co-writer Kelly Murtagh is absolutely fabulous in the leading role and makes this slow-burning new horror film quite an intriguing experience to behold.
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Murtagh plays Ivy, a New Orleans singer who does gigs at night while working a thankless job during the day. As the film’s main story line comes in to play, we see Ivy at a grocery store buying some junk food. Her cookies don’t ring up correctly at the register and the clerk has to do a price check. Ivy is embarrassed. She just wants to get her snacks and get out of the store. She has a secret eating disorder. Many scenes in this new movie are interesting but don’t necessarily advance the plot much. However, that makes the film more unique as its visuals and music help give definition to the character of Ivy and set the stage for the horror that is to come. Ivy is a good-looking woman who is hard-working and determined. She is occasionally late to her day job which bothers her boss and holds her back from getting a higher salary. However, Ivy has other inner demons that haunt her and the eating disorder is a result of how she unsuccessfully tries to cope with them. Murtagh is captivating in her role. She keeps the movie’s story line relatable because we like her character. When she struggles to sing successfully at a wedding, we truly feel sympathy for her predicament. It seems her body is undergoing some severe changes and we want her to overcome the obstacles she is facing in her life which are horrifying in their excesses. Aldana’s film, admittedly, contains more style than substance. There’s no real resolve to the plot but there really couldn’t be much more of a conclusion to the story. The film is about the devastating effects of letting your inner demons steal your life right out from underneath you. From a doctor’s visit that reveals information that will alter Ivy’s life forever to fantasy sequences where we see grisly images of how the disorder has affected Ivy, Aldana keeps the viewer intrigued throughout. Comparisons to Lynch are inevitable as Aldana’s directing style takes on a life of its own and creates a truly unique movie-going experience. One particularly memorable sequence shows Ivy surrounded by bags and boxes of junk food as we see how the eating disorder has consumed her life. This image is haunting and one of the best shots in the movie. Murtagh’s performance is always, ultimately, the key to the film’s success. If her flawed character wasn’t relatable, the whole essence of the movie would fall right out from underneath it. Murtagh becomes an actress to be reckoned with through her performance in this movie. She demands the audience’s attention at all times and we are terrified by the experiences her character goes through during the course of the film. Shapeless, for all its horrifying themes, is a movie that one won’t soon forget. Murtagh is fantastic. Aldana is a director to watch. Rating: 7/10 Leave your thoughts on this Shapeless review and the film below in the comments section. Readers seeking to support this type of content can visit our Patreon Page and become one of FilmBook’s patrons. Readers seeking more Tribeca Film Festival news can visit our Tribeca Film Festival Page, our Tribeca Film Festival Twitter Page, and our Film Festival Facebook Page. Readers seeking more film reviews can visit our Movie Review Page, our Movie Review Twitter Page, and our Movie Review Facebook Page. Want up-to-the-minute notifications? FilmBook staff members publish articles by Email, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest, Reddit, and Flipboard.
