Review: A SPOONFUL OF SUGAR

Millicent is taking a break from her tertiary studies to gain some work experience and let her therapy catch up with her trauma. Orphaned early in life she has grown up through the foster system which she tells her therapist was about nice women and men who might as well have been the same one. Under supervision, she microdoses on LSD which seems to get her through the days, showing an acceptable front (though she does have some heavily sexual hallucinations on a daily basis). She gets a job nannying a boy whose play astronaut suit is only slightly removed from the crazy rollcall of allergies he is alleged to have. While he is self-enclosed and chooses not to speak he can write and draw. His mother has gone through a lot of nannies who have failed her. Her husband is a hunky carpenter. Millicent gets the gig and makes a lot of progress with young Johnny and every day returns home to her current foster father who all but drools over her. Where's that industrial strength acid?

Once established, the atmosphere of this dark tale gets thick and stays that way until the credit roll. It takes its time and takes pains to let you know that you will not be expected to empathise with any of the characters you will encounter, including the protagonist. This is a deliberate choice on the part of writer Leah Saint Marie and director Mercedes Bryce Morgan. They want to keep their audiences engaged at a distance, witnesses to a life where the sexual pulses louder than heartbeats and when someone gets paranoid about others' motivations along those lines they might well be bang on.

This is a world of polished oak panelling, magic hour light through windows and rainy day exteriors, a kind of X-Files episode of Autumn temperatures and growling horror movie scoring. While that might sound appealing it is at odds with the development of a story that involves no chance to feel for anyone you meet in it. If you think Johnny's biting and scratching and screaming are like the horror of a child at the sight of the ways of the world the way they were in Oskar Mazerath's Nazi Germany in The Tin Drum, his violence feels more feral than self defensive. I'd argue that this, too, is intentional. The problem is that if you are going to have a crack at subverting the expectations of a thriller you'd better have a payoff that says something you care about. That's where this beautifully produced and performed piece flunks. It's not that we are easy with the conclusions we come to it's more that they might as well have happened.

Is it Morgan Saylor's fault that she overacts until what charisma she began with has eroded buy the middle act? Is Kat Foster starting on 10 as the crazy jealous mother, telescoping the rest of the film, too richly baked? It's writing and direction that fail to provide the texture that might make us doubt our own judgement and shift our loyalties that prevent us from staying on our side of the cordon. Pity.

Currently on Shudder.