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