Director Anmol Mishra’s arthouse film Death certainly won’t be for everyone. It has a quartet of truly oddball characters and an experimental, fragmented narrative. That said, the film is a good example of how to make the most out of a limited budget. It’s also not without its humor, especially during some of its most outlandish sequences.
The film does contain a jolting opening. A young woman named Sabrina (Marigold Pazar) lays in a bathtub full of blood. She’s obviously suicidal. Moments later, there’s an image of a butcher knife twirling in the air, before landing upon Sabrina’s boyfriend, Romeo (David Hecimovic). As Sabrina essentially waits for death, her life flashes before her eyes in fragments. However, it’s unclear what’s real and what isn’t. Where is the truth among Sabrina’s pieces of memory?
Through the strange and bizarre trip down Sabrina’s memory lane, it’s clear that Romero was never exactly the most thoughtful boyfriend. Did that necessarily warrant taking a butcher knife to the poor guy? No, probably not, but the film does explore the relationship in dribs and drabs.
By the midway point, Sabrina’s memory fixates on an awkward gathering among Romeo, Sabrina, Sabrina’s friend Wendy (Lauren Johnson), and Wendy’s latest boyfriend Mazza (Oliver James Damian), who smokes a lot of cigars, and I mean a lot of cigars. In fact, Mazza is really the film’s comedic relief, a totally absurd character. The scenes regarding the get-together are some of the most grounded in the film and also explore the friendship between Wendy and Sabrina, including Sabrina’s questioning about where and how Wendy met Mazza.
From there, the film grows even stranger, its uncanniness reinforced by the off-center camera angles that make the whole thing feel disorienting, which is most likely the point. There’s a prolonged sequence where Wendy and Mazza smoke in the car, and yet, even that feels like something out of a David Lynch film.
Mishra certainly deserves credit for making a little go a long way. Though this film has a small budget, that doesn’t prevent the filmmaker from bringing her dream-like vision to life. She does this through some of the blue lightening, the camera angles, and even some of the odd dialogue. She also does a good job at balancing different tones and genres, including humor and bloody moments of horror.
Death certainly isn’t a movie for everyone. It leans heavily into arthouse aesthetics and a non-conventional narrative. That said, there’s no doubt that Mishra presents a unique and uncompromising vision. This film is a wild trip alright.
