🟨 Hypochondriac (2022) Review - Ghost of Fursona Past | Film Waffle

Hypochondriac (2022) directed by Addison Heimann

Gay men and daddy issues. Name a more iconic duo. 

Uniquely, Hypochondriac brings home the mommy issues for the main course. 

Truly breaking the mold. We love equality in this house.

Quick Summary

It's been 18 years since Will's mommy dearest attempted to choke him to death during one of her psychotic episodes, yet the dude's Oedipus complex is still firing on all cylinders.

Now a fully-fledged adult and gay twink living on the Golden Coast, Will works as a potter. He's got a nice life. A nice boyfriend who lives in a suspiciously spacious and lavish house given the cost-of-living crisis. A nice friend who lets the dude and his bf stay in her family's sick mountain lodge for free.

But the past still haunts our protaga-twink. When his mother begins reaching out after her stint in a mental hospital, the painful memories of his childhood begin to resurface.

Story & Characters

There's a surprising amount of things stuffed into this relatively short movie. For better or for worse.

We begin with some old tapes and some creepy ambiance of kid Will being filmed by his mother.

Loved it. Gave me Sinister vibes.

Then we get right into it with baby Will's mama having an episode and suddenly shits breaking in the middle of the night and his mama is telling him to get into the car and they are driving away and Will doesn't know what the hell is going on and suddenly she's accusing him of shit and trying to strangle him and what the fuck is going on give me a seconds to breathe hermano.

Starting a story off with action is the most basic of basic writing advice, but I have to wonder if this was the film blowing its load too early. 

There is an authorship school of thought that says that beginning with action is  detrimental, as audiences do not have a firm grasp of the world. Thus, tension can fall flat because context is missing and relationships are not well established.

I'm not saying I agree with that view, but I've never felt it ring more true than here. 

Something about this opening sequence feels like too much too soon. I feel like I should be more emotionally invested in a story beat where a mother nearly kills her son. Instead, while it was interesting, it wasn't the gut punch that it should have been. 

But then we get an upbeat dance montage with an adult Will dancing at his pottery job. 

Ngl, I thought this was a cool form of characterization. Plus it threw me right back to the early 2010s with Jessie J's Domino. We dig some discount British Katy Perry.

It doesn't help that Will is literally me. Dimples. Scruffy facial hair. Mixed descent. Twinky build. Pops his fingers and wrists so often that it creeps out everyone he's around. Is a subtle asshole to everyone he meets.

I have a question in the off-chance a potter reads this, but is it normal to light-up an entire goddamn furnace to fire two pieces of clay?

That seems crazy wasteful to me. I remember they used to use racks in school. Then people could fire many at the same time. Perhaps high-class clients and their high-class earthenware are different.

Also, I know I pointed it out earlier, but this house? In California?

This isn't even Will's house. It's his boyfriend's, Luke. Luke, who apparently works as a teacher? Counselor? Caseworker?

You expect me to believe a solo dude with that job experience lives in a house like this in coastal Cali? You must be joking!

Getting back on track with actual critiques, there's a lot of dreamy and hippy-trippy imagery. Too much, in my opinion.

 

The distorted voices. The psychedelic trance states. It was not doing it for me.

We are trying a little bit too hard, friends.

It's frustrating because occasionally the weirdness pays off. Sometimes it hits the mark and becomes genuinely unsettling.

But more often than not, the result is less than profound. Pretentious. Artsy fartsy. Sometimes it crosses the border into straight cringe for no real reason other than to fill time.

"WeLCoMe tO MY DiStoRTed mInD!!1~"

Maybe this was to emulate the surrealism of European-style films. But if that's the case, we ain't no European cinema. Stop acting like it.

The monster in the film is a "wolf". Basically it's a grown-up version of his old Halloween costume. The significance of it being a wolf didn't really connect to anything else in the story other than the intro sequence with his mama, so it felt random. 

I get that it's meant to be a manifestation of his childhood trauma or his robbed innocence. But that's already reinforced through so many things in the film. His relationship with Luke, his mother, his father, his anxieties, his fears, his hypochondria.

Don't know why we needed a personified spooky dude in a furry suit to get that across. IDK. Kinda felt like it was there to be creepy for creepy's sake.

How is the audience even supposed to know this thing is a "wolf" without being told? Compare this shit to the first image in this post. Completely different! 

"bUT iT's BEen corRuPTeD!"

Mmm. What else?

The self-harm bits were intense. That's the one line that I struggle to cross in horror movies. So congrats for making me squirm, I guess. I don't really feel like it was earned, but whatever.

On a more positive note, the small character moments are great!

The dialogue and relationships are top-notch. The acting is fantastic. Like. Surprisingly good. The characters are easily the strongest aspect of the movie.

Zach Villa was amazing as Will. Even when the scene was shit, I really enjoyed watching him do his thing. I haven't seen any of his other stuff, but he's done a fair amount in the past.

Scratch that, apparently Zach voiced Jacobus, the shitty Antivan Crow recruit in Dragon Age: The Veilguard. 

Killed that mf. No hesitation. Dragon Age: Origins crows would have done the same. Duncan didn't die for this, but that kid sure as hell did.

Will and Luke, played by Devon Graye, have really good chemistry. Their bantz are funny and light and hit me just right. More of that please.

The father and the boss character do leave something to be desired. They are the stockiest of stock characters. The dad is dismissive and tells Will to grow up. The boss only cares about money and image and profit. Still, their roles are minor enough that I didn't mind it much.

The ending was abrupt.

Will has one nasty episode in which he imagines conquering his inner demons. Then poof. All good.

Did funding dry up? Because that was a sprint to the finish if I've ever seen one.

As the credits rolled, I wasn't sure what I was supposed to take away from this. What was the theme here? Something about dealing with trauma and not avoiding it? Maybe how it always stays with you? Facing your past? As I said at the start of this section, there so much stuff that it makes me unsure.

The film leaves a fair amount of loose ends. How did Will's mom know about Luke? Why did she keep saying Luke was bad? What was with Will's vitamin deficiency? What was with the evil lair in their old house?

Handfuls of plot points brought up and then dropped. Feels like I missed scenes. It makes for a frustratingly incomplete experience.

Finally, the trigger word being "domain" was silly.

Mechanics & Structure

There's a 10 second scene of Will taking a dump and struggling with a bidet. 

Okay?? 

LOL. 

Voyeuristic much? 

More fun characterization, I suppose. 

And I'm not even showing the explicit sex scene. 

Let's be highbrow for a moment, ladies and gents. Let's say these demonstrate Will's utter nakedness when confronting his deep-seated scars. That's why the nightmare demon is a furry and why he has scratch marks on his back in one scene.

Omg it all makes sense now. The dude fucked a furry, and it's his internalized guilt that's hunting him down.

I already voiced my disdain for the psychedelic sequences. The distorted voice. The omnipresent whispers. The distorted border at the edge of the camera.

But, setting that all aside, I would say Hypochondriac does pretty well for itself in the mechanics department.

The music is good. Got some ambient tracks for much of the story. Silence is used well too. Heightens the tension between characters during their arguments. During revelations and the climax, we are treated to more expressive tracks that incorporate the surreal quality the film is going for. More mixed reception there.

Interposing the text of Will's google searches on the screen and accompanying them with dramatic musical stings was tacky. 

Don't do that.

And that's about it.

Final Thoughts

In the end, Hypochondriac is a mixed bag.

The main characters are great, and their performances are high-quality. But the film's vision is lacking. 

It triple-dips into monster, surrealist, and psychological horror. Yet, Hypochondriac ends up being superficial in each of these areas. It's not an offensive film by any means, but it lacks the focus to jump from mediocre to exciting. From pedestrian to elevated. Something it is very desperately trying to do.

In the end, despite a good effort, it's a film. Toss it in the pile with all the others.

Obligatory apology for late-posting. I swear I'll get back to Friday film waffle postings one of these days. 

🟨 Rating: 5/10