If Crystal Fairy is about "the birth of compassion in someone’s life”, as director Sebastián Silva explained when it premiered at Sundance last year, then Magic Magic (which he shot at the same time) can be seen as a companion piece of sorts. It’s not too far a reach to assume Silva is testing his audience with this disorientating and incredibly taut look at mental illness. He explores how deep sympathies really lie for a disorder that some have difficulty empathising with and how the decisions arrived at by a pack mentality can lead to devastating consequences.
Silva cleverly sets this psychodrama up as a horror flick with a group of students on their way to a desolate cabin in the woods, and he excels in establishing a disquieting ambience. In Magic Magic Juno Temple turns in a remarkable performance as Alicia, an American abroad in Chile and a woman very visibly on the edge. She's visiting her cousin Sara (Emily Browning) but their planned trip out of Santiago into the wilderness with a group of Sara's friends becomes a terrifying ordeal when Sara suddenly announces she must return home to retake an exam, leaving Alicia to fend for herself in an unfamiliar setting with a group of people she hardly knows. Paranoia sets in, exacerbated by the language barrier, leaving Alicia suffering from a severe case of insomnia and somnambulism.
Although he's initially introduced as an unappealing love interest, Alicia's chief tormenter is Brink, played by a Spanish-speaking Michael Cera (pictured right), who's still determinedly shaking off the shackles of his awkward nerd persona - here he's a vile, lecherous, personal-space-invading creep. The interplay between Brink and Alicia is impressive in its ability to make your skin crawl, and Silva’s fantastic use of light both illuminates and shrouds Brink's prowling presence to great effect.
There are certainly shades of Polanski’s Repulsion in this menacing relationship, though our unreliable narrator Alicia is never attracted to Brink given that from the start he’s presented as a shrill and obnoxious presence. Her other companions include the hypnosis-obsessed Agustín (Agustín Silva, the director's brother), who is determined to help by putting Alicia in a trance, and the distant Bárbara (onetime Oscar nominee Catalina Sandino Moreno), who offers up medication as a solution. None of them bother to really listen to - or engage with - Alicia.
As Alicia plunges further into a prison of disturbing darkness and isolation, she still attempts to join in with group activities - her desperation to please them and fit in overtaking her need to get better. Silva's film may begin with black comedy, with Cera’s over-the-top performance shifting the focus from Alicia’s distress, but it glides into full-on dizzying mania with distorted visuals, piercing sound effects and a repetitive use of music (the haunting tones of Minnie the Moocher), employed to make you feel uneasy. Silva plants you deep inside Alicia’s place - the distorted, claustrophobic hell of her perception - in a film that represents a raw and chilling delve into debilitating fear.
Overleaf: watch the trailer for Magic Magic
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