Director: Dia Taylor
Writer: Dia Taylor
Cast: Nikolai Egel, Cassidy Dunn, Jeni Bezuidenhout, Adam Balales
Running time: 25mins
No filmmaker has submitted more work to Indy Film Library than Dia Taylor. At times, that must have been a galling process, especially in 2020, when three films were completed and sent for review – only to receive a mean average score of 2.6. That may have been why the next submission took as long as it did – because The Red Lights of Town arrives a full five years after Daughters landed in our inbox.
Such a dramatic shift in output seems to suit Taylor well, however. Of all her films, none has ever felt so fussed over, so loved as a work in its own right as The Red Lights of Town. While there are some hangovers from those previous outings (including an overwrought soundtrack babying us on how to feel at any given moment, and a slightly over-complicated edit as scenes flash back and forward), overall, it feels like something completely new on this artist’s journey. Gone completely is the sense that each film is merely a rushed step on the path to the next, and instead, this piece feels like it has been allowed the time and space to be an end, rather than a means.
The supernatural story follows Donovan, who at times appears to be competing for the title of World’s Most Oblivious Man. Apparently sleep-walking his way through life in a dead-end job at the grocery store, Don misses some worryingly unsubtle warning signs about his niece’s home life, his wife’s health, and who might be lurking in the passenger’s seat of his car. When a mysterious stranger suddenly carjacks him after a late shift, he finds himself on an unexpected journey of self-discovery, which runs the emotional gamut.
He is the kind of character many other stories would present as a caricature – a Nick Frost-like man-baby, living in suspended animation to the cost of everyone else around him – but what is most interesting about The Red Lights is that this sense of stasis is overtly setting up a narrative sucker-punch in the film’s final third. Swept along for the ride, we learn not only to view him more sympathetically than simply an affable oaf, but a reflection of our own fears and regrets – as well as someone to learn from. Sometimes, we cannot afford to wait for a perfect moment, or to keep our heads down to hope for better tomorrows. Eventually, we run out of those.
When it comes to addressing dark family secrets, or long-held artistic ambitions, that is a valuable lesson to learn. At the other end of the spectrum, however, this movie reflects a more measured and patient approach from its creator.
Taylor has drafted and redrafted this story, before finally committing it to film, and it shows. The script offers emotional depth without becoming mawkish. It allows space for lead Nikolai Egel to bring light and comedy to his performance as Donovan, without undermining the film’s heart. And it keeps finding ways to check our (or at least, my) cynicism while delivering an impactful, human story through an implausible supernatural framing.
The best planning in the world cannot fully prepare a script for the actual process of committing it to film, though. Once cameras are running and funds are shrinking, shortcomings in the dialogue, plot holes and location clashes will cause problems. It is then up to a filmmaker to adapt their plan to the resources they have, rather than the ones they wish they had. And here, again, it seems that Taylor has grown as a filmmaker – there’s bags of ambition on display here, but a kind of focus that wasn’t always present in previous films. So, while there are still outlandish, otherworldly ideas to explore, they are properly developed, in a way that mostly pays off.
A lot of this depends on being able to hang the story on its central performance. Egel is excellent in that regard, playing everything straight and sincere, but with a baffled, relatable oafishness that means most of his takes could just as easily have been played for laughs – but more often than not have an emotional authenticity that complements the key motif. He comes across like a real person thrown into a strange and impossible world – justifiably lending the idea of a ghost driving through town much credence as one of his co-workers accidentally adding $20 on to a customer’s bill.
If anything, I wish there had been a little more room afforded for some comedic beats, as the conversation between Don and his mysterious passenger (Cassidy Dunn) draws out the impossible-seeming elements of the story. And, with the mention at one point during a flash-back about driving across country with a departed friend’s ashes (I don’t want to get into spoilers), it is also possible to imagine this story re-told on those lines. A perplexed Don attempting to get to a sacred location to disperse those ashes, disrupted by an increasingly bizarre set of demands from a nameless hitchhiker.
The thing is, it is infinitely easier to have an idea, than to see it through to the end. I am no different from a great many other critics, in that far too easily I will slip into fantasy filmmaking, rather than talking about the movie actually in front of me. But every so often, it is important to remind myself that – having lived the trauma of amateur filmmaking myself, and come out with significantly worse products than the things I often dismiss – it is a minor miracle when an artist has anything at all to present at the end of that hellish process.
While The Red Lights of Town has the bones of three or four stories which I might rather have seen it become, then, I have to be clear that the form I did see it in was actually very good in its own right. From start to finish, managed to engage me, with humour and earned emotional beats – presenting a way for someone I took to be a bumbling caricature to grow into a three-dimensional character, before tying my stomach in all kinds of nots with its frenetic ending.
