The Scary of Sixty-First is a throwback to the low budget Mumblegore movies of the early part of the 21st century. It takes place in mostly one location, has a small cast, and is an awfully slow burn. As far as these things go, it’s not bad.
Noelle (Madeline Quinn) and Addie (Betsey Brown) rent a swanky New York apartment that has a weird layout. Almost immediately, they start having bad dreams and amped up horniness. The pair soon drift apart, mostly due to the bad juju in the apartment. Addie spends more time with her dopey boyfriend (Mark Rapaport) and Noelle invites a nosy reporter (Dasha Nekrasova, who also directed) into the apartment (and her bed). The reporter is convinced the apartment was once owned by none other than Jeffrey Epstein and that it has bad intentions for Noelle and Addie.
The fact that Nekrasova makes Jeffrey Epstein a plot point may make some cry “Too soon!”. However, if they had used some fictionalized version of the sleazy billionaire, it wouldn’t have the same effect. Because of that, The Scary of Sixty-First has a little bit more of a bite to it than you might expect. Using real photos of Epstein, Ghislane Maxwell, his island compound, etc. is sort of in bad taste at times, but at least it makes the film stand out in a sea of trauma-based indie horror flicks.
While there are visual nods to both Polanski and Kubrick, overall, Nekrasova’s style is rather mundane. That’s a good thing though, because when something random or strange happens (like when Brown uses tabloid clippings of Prince Andrew to masturbate), it registers with a larger impact. As with most slow burns, you can abide being jerked around as long as the director delivers the goods in the final reel. I can’t quite say that Nekrasova was able to stick the landing, but she got close enough to the runway to make me curious to see what she’ll do next.
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