2023 SCREAMFEST REVIEW!
Sam (Danielle Beckmann) and Kiki (Reese Antoinette) are medical students, and the semester has been incredibly challenging. They decide to take a trip, and they will soon find out that unwinding after an exhausting semester is the least of their worries. Now, atop their list of things to do sits survival.
Sam & Kiki is incredibly minimalistic, allowing the film to remain relatively simple and accessible. Writer-Director Mark Manson walks a fine line between being too simple and cheesy and being effective in his venture. There are certainly times when the film leans into the cheese, when it struggles to hit the right emotional notes–but I feel like the intensity is understood for the most part. With the film existing smack dab in the middle of the horror genre, it’s important that the intensity be understood–and I think Manson achieves that. Even in the moments with Beckmann’s cringey accent, it’s understood the horror and trauma that is about to rear its ugly head. From those opening moments, Manson and his team make it abundantly clear what’s to come and that Sam & Kiki is, without a doubt, a horror film.
Sam & Kiki moves by so quickly. By the time I realized what was happening, or really by the time anything happened, the film was coming to a close. Realistically, it’s not hard to figure out what’s coming next, to understand the things that would eventually come of the short horror film–but still, this film feels unbalanced. With that being said, however, I don’t think this hurts the film. Sure, I do wish there was more time for Sam & Kiki to develop after it climaxes, but everything that needs to be in the film is in the film.
Darkness often fills the screen throughout the course of Sam & Kiki, and there are a number of times in which the film is challenging to see. Like the other components of the film, the heavy darkness doesn’t hinder the film–this actually makes it better. As a result of the film often treading the line between heavy and hyperreal/silly, the darkness allows the intensity that needs to be present to remain so throughout Sam & Kiki.
Manson finds a way to be both cheesy and direct, both subtle and exaggerated, heavy in his use of darkness while allowing that darkness to play a pivotal role in the development. Sam & Kiki, as minimalistic as it is, has so many moving parts–so many things that make it work. I do believe that the simplicity will turn some viewers off to the film, but I found that aspect of Sam & Kiki charming–and it ultimately worked for me. I do wish that there had been more to the film’s resolution, that the film would have been given a bit more time to develop in the closing act, but all in all, Sam & Kiki does what it set out to do.
Written & Directed by Mark Manson.
Starring Reese Antoinette, Danielle Beckmann, Brad Wakeman, Riki Stevens, Alivia Iannucci, etc.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐½/10
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