Indies rule

‘Creep,’ ‘Mekko’ and ‘A Poem Is A Naked Person’

Creep

“Creep” is one of the most unexpectedly effective films of 2015. For his debut feature, writer/director Patrick Brice collaborated with Mark Duplass to create a supremely unnerving film that should be viewed with as little advanced knowledge as possible (avoid the trailer). 

Aaron (Brice) is a freelance videographer whose response to a Craigslist ad for a day’s video work leads him to a remote cabin in the woods. Josef (Duplass, who also co-wrote the largely improvised script) is his enthusiastic subject and employer—a husband and soon-to-be father dying of brain cancer who hired Aaron to create a video document of “the man he was” for his yet-unborn child.

Things feel weird almost immediately. Josef talks to Aaron with an assumed familiarity, acting as if they’re already the best of friends within minutes of meeting. His desperate need for connection is admirably genuine but intensely uncomfortable. Aaron, despite being wary of Josef’s needy openness, finds himself reluctantly succumbing to his affable charms. Josef is a weirdo, but he’s also intelligent, funny and sympathetically awkward.

But social awkwardness eventually gives way to something darker. Josef refuses to let the day end, and Aaron becomes trapped in a nightmare of manners. 

As a writer and director, Brice exhibits the same sense of emotional awareness and affinity for characters that he displayed in “The Overnight”—the intricacies (and intimacy) of strangers becoming friends under strange pretenses. Brice expertly toys with our expectations in both films, though “Creep” is, tonally, a different animal. In “The Overnight,” the trepidation eventually falls away. “Creep” gleefully ratchets up the tension with a self-assurance that’s amazing, considering this is Brice’s first film.  

The humor of both films disarms us for the same purpose, and “Creep” is often funnier than its lighter counterpart. That’s largely due to Duplass, who subverts his earnest, nice-guy screen presence with a sinister, subtly revealed rottenness.

Brice is a fine actor, but his true strengths lie in his knack for naturalistic storytelling, sculpting tangibly real characters and eliciting charismatic performances. 

“The Overnight” and “Creep,” released simultaneously on different platforms, represent a formidable one-two punch from a young filmmaker with a bright future.

“Creep” is available now on Netflix Instant. 

Mekko

Oklahoma-based auteur Sterlin Harjo earned acclaim out of the gate with his first Sundance entry, a short film called “Goodnight Irene.” The award-winning, Holdenville-born writer/director made his first feature, “Four Sheets to the Wind,” in 2008 and returned to Sundance with his next two films: the Zen-like elegy “Barking Water” and “This May Be the Last Time,” a haunting documentary of indigenous hymns told through the lens of Harjo’s grandfather’s mysterious disappearance in 1962. The bedrock of native culture, family and respect is the golden thread that unifies each of Harjo’s films, along with the bucolic Oklahoma setting.

With his latest, “Mekko,” Harjo folds those elements into a more direct genre thriller, and the results are at once familiar and revelatory.

Mekko (Rod Rondeaux) is an ex-con on parole after 19 years in prison. His old hometown is now a ghostly, Picher-esque Superfund site, the groundwater poisoned from lead mining. So he travels to Tulsa with the hope of staying with his sister and leaving his past (and his demons) behind.

Rebuffed when she doesn’t believe he’s changed his stripes, Mekko falls in with an old friend and acclimates to life on the streets.

When a wheelchair-bound derelict (Scott Mason) turns up dead, Mekko is set on a collision course with Bill (Zahn McClarnon), a psychopathic drug dealer who gets off on beating the shit out of the helpless addicts who owe him money (kind of like a sub-prime lender with a crowbar). The film builds to an explosive confrontation between Bill and the stoic Mekko.

Crafting an intoxicating tale, Harjo blends his vérité sensibilities with an evocative character study steeped in taut drama. The film elicits moments of profound emotion (and Harjo’s typically warm sense of humor) as Mekko seeks to reclaim his dignity while holding fast to his humanity.    

Rondeaux gives a natural, utterly opaque performance suffused with world-weary calm—an unaffected counterpoint to McClarnon’s chilling turn as Bill, whose barely restrained malevolence takes on the near-mythical qualities of the legends that shaped Mekko’s life.

The film looks great, as lensed by Shane Brown and edited by Matt Leach, Blackhorse Crowe and Harjo, and the story is strong enough to make the familiarity of the locale an afterthought. 

Circle Cinema will screen “Mekko” on July 18. 

A Poem Is A Naked Person

After years of legal wrangling, Les Blank’s documentary “A Poem is A Naked Person,” perhaps his magnum opus, is finally receiving a proper release. 

Comprised of footage shot by the legendary documentarian from 1972-1974 at Leon Russell’s studio compound on Grand Lake, “Poem” captures moments during Russell’s most fertile period as a songwriter. Blank provides a view of the pivotal collaborations that influenced decades of rock ‘n’ roll and etched an indelible mark on Oklahoma history.

The film’s lack of a discernible narrative contributes to its guerilla elegance. Scenes of pastoral life and Russell’s rural Oklahoma neighbors are interspersed with more esoteric images that act as borders between the live performances and fly-on-the-wall moments of rehearsal. The film eventually takes on an unmoored, dreamlike quality. That’s not to say it’s random; Blank’s innate sensibility is as perceptive as it is instinctual. The result is a mélange of enigmatic history and wonderfully immediate glimpses of legendary titans at the height of their creative powers. Blank transports us to their world. 

Leon Russell hated it, though I’m not quite sure why. He comes off as a cool character, for what it’s worth. And the film was considered by Blank himself to be his best. Regardless, that’s why it only received an official premiere just last March at the SXSW Film Festival (with Russell’s blessing), after years of Blank exhibiting it himself. For free. Apparently, he loved it that much.

Fortunately, Blank’s son Harrod waded through the legal issues and championed the film’s release after his father’s death in 2013. And rightly so. The performances alone, from Russell and his band (including appearances by Willie Nelson and George Jones, among others) make “A Poem Is A Naked Person” a profoundly important document. It’s a wholly unique film, even in the realm of Les Blank’s stellar career of peerless timepieces. 

“A Poem Is A Naked Person” opens August 5 at Circle Cinema with Leon Russell, Harrod Blank and co-producer Maureen Gosling in attendance. Visit circlecinema.com for details.

For more from Joe, read his story on Tulsa's comedy scene and his review of Mad Max: Fury Road.