6A — Monday, April 18, 2016
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Complex ‘Krisha’

By DANIEL HENSEL

Daily Arts Writer

If family gatherings are the 

stuff of horror, then Thanksgiving 
must be the ultimate terror. Com-
plicated histories, strange man-
nerisms and different cultures all 

converge for the sake of “family,” 
whatever that word means.

In “Krisha,” the debut fea-

ture 
by 
writer-director 
Trey 

Edward Shults, we’re made privy 
to one such horror story. On its 
surface, “Krisha” tells a simple 
story: a woman in her sixties, the 

titular Krisha (Krisha Fairchild, 
“The Killing of John Lennon”), 
estranged from her family and 
a recovering alcoholic and drug 
addict, returns for a Thanksgiv-
ing dinner. Slowly, the complex 
linkages between Krisha and her 
sisters, brothers-in-law, nephews 

and nieces all unravel, leaving 
Krisha in a delicate space.

“Krisha” is a film you should 

see 
alone. 

That’s not to 
say 
I 
didn’t 

enjoy compa-
ny during my 
viewing, 
but 

to sit alone in a 
darkened the-
ater, staring at 
this woman’s 
struggles with no one to turn to, 
must be a singularly horrifying 
experience. I first drew a com-
parison to Stanley Kubrick’s “The 
Shining,” a tale of isolation in an 
isolated place. But “Krisha” tells 
a story of isolation amid a large 
group of people — even the people 
one should be closest with. Krisha 
often sulks upstairs, away from 
the action, looking down at them 
from her window (the spatial logic 
of the house, like in “The Shining,” 
is labyrinthine). She turns more 
quickly to her box of prescription 
pills than her family.

“Krisha,” at times, feels like if 

Terrence Malick did something 
like “The Shining.” This is only 
natural, as Shults worked as an 
assistant for Malick on a number 
of his films before helming “Kri-
sha.” Shults uses a wide-ranging 
palette of sounds to simulate Kri-
sha’s sobering experiences. In the 
kitchen, the sounds of the tele-
vision blasting ESPN or of kids 
bouncing balls on the floor seem 
almost comical in their juxtapo-
sition with the beeping score (lit-
eral beeps are a large component 
of the truly sinisterly terrifying 
score), and Krisha doesn’t seem 
pleased. For her, family comes 
with the baggage of sensory over-
load itself, and Shults doesn’t hold 
back in letting us know what she’s 
feeling. One particular climac-
tic scene is rendered in a blur of 
words, actions and visions. Sud-
denly, the act of cooking the tur-
key has turned into a nightmarish 
daze.

Shults’s debut is made all the 

more impressive by the sheer low-

budget factor of it all. Shults wrote, 
directed, edited and starred in 
the film. Most of the actors are 
his actual family members. He 
also doesn’t mind using his own 
personal information in the film. 
Shults, who studied business 
management in college and then 
dropped out to follow his pas-
sion of making films, portrays the 
conveniently named Trey, who is 
currently studying — you guessed 
it — business management while 
harboring aspirations of becom-
ing — right again — a filmmaker.

Fairchild’s performance is sim-

ply incredible. From her clothes 
to her bags to the way she walks 
and talks to herself, we know this 
character. Disheveled yet caring, 
Krisha has long been separated 
from her family and her anticipa-
tion for seeing them again is met 
by an equally strong anxiety. Her 
life is in shambles, to put it lightly, 
but she herself is fun and funny. 
This we can gather from the open-
ing moments of the film. Every-
thing after is icing on the cake.

A-

Krisha

A24

State Theatre

FILM REVIEW

