collective:unconscious
2016 · 1h 18m · USA
Directed by Lily Baldwin, Nuotama Bodomo, Daniel Patrick Carbone, Josephine Decker, Lauren Wolkstein
Genres: experimental, horror, surrealism
Tones: absurdist, dark, surreal
Five independent filmmakers were hypnotized and then assigned to adapt each other's dreams into short films, which are assembled here as an omnibus feature. The resulting segments range from a black-and-white suppression drama to a macabre children's TV show hosted by a suicidal Grim Reaper, a gym teacher's absurdist volcanic monologues, a Rosemary's Baby-toned pregnancy horror, and a documentary-dance hybrid about formerly incarcerated women.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Five directors, five dreams, one genuinely unnerving procedural conceit — and the execution is uneven in precisely the ways you would expect from collaborative dream-work. Josephine Decker's segment alone justifies inclusion; taken whole, this is ambitious, sprawling, and imperfect. A score-6 that is honest about its inconsistency without apologizing for its ambition.
The hypnosis conceit is actually doing work — five distinct shorts, a Grim Reaper kids' show, dance-doc hybrid, real authorial chain. Worth the 77 minutes if any segment lands.
77-minute omnibus where five directors were literally hypnotized and assigned each other's dreams to adapt — Josephine Decker, Carbone, Wolkstein, Bodomo, Baldwin. That involuntary authorship chain is a genuinely radical formal idea, and the cast is loaded.
Festivals
- South by Southwest 2016