Slamdance 2023 Film Festival  – Wendy McColm isn’t exactly an unknown name. She’s appeared on Community and How I Met Your Mother, and she has several shorts and a feature under her belt. Her second film, Fuzzy Head, is a hauntingly beautiful and surreal exploration of childhood trauma, a film that dabbles with experimentation without losing the viewer.

McColm also stars in the film as Marla, who suffers from insomnia and struggles to understand and discover the truth about her mother’s death. In fact, she worries that she may have murdered her mom. The rest of the film jumps back and forth between past and present, through the hazy corridors of Marla’s memories. Alicia Witt does a strong job playing a mother who is both cruel, at one point making her young daughter (Cassidy Butler) walk across a broken glass as a form of punishment, and a woman who shows flashes of love for her kid, eventually pleading with her not to leave. It must be challenging to play someone who can be both so harsh, yet so vulnerable. Witt handles it well. Likewise, McColm impresses as the lead, playing a character on the cusp of a nervous breakdown, trying to piece together her troubled past, while processing profound trauma. You really feel for her character and want her to be okay.

Much of the film feels like a dream and sometimes a nightmare. This is reinforced through the frequent red and yellow tones. It’s unclear if the conversations Marla has with others are even real, especially considering she hasn’t slept in far too many days. Yet, the film never feels so experimental that that it’s off-putting to a general audience. You just have to remember the protagonist is sorting through fractured memories, mining her past to understand what led to her mother’s death.

Fuzzy Head contains more than one scene that’s both striking and visually arresting. In a brothel scene that may or may not be real, Marla meets with quadriplegic client (Fred Melamed) who doesn’t demand sex from her, but rather wants to dig inside her mind. He keeps demanding that she open up, and it’s unnerving to watch the sequence unfold until Marla nearly snaps. There are other moments like that particular scene that are just as effective and even hellish.

Fuzzy Head is the type of film you simply have to surrender yourself to and allow it to play out. It jumps from one memory to the next, hence the title. At the center is an extremely volatile character just one more sleepless night away from her breaking point. McColm’s second feature shows her prowess as a filmmaker unafraid to take on some heavy subject matter. This is a strangely affecting and expressive feature with a heavy emotional core.

7 Out of 10