4085: Sore Throat, The Kids Aren't Alright 2, & Heist
Having attended 4085’s first film festival last year, I was impressed, to say the least, by the company’s evident progress at this year’s festival. Founded among USC students during 2020’s quarantine, the production company screened six short films and a surprise trailer for their first ever feature on December 3rd 2022. In exactly a year’s time since their first festival, 4085 has matured. Though the group would benefit from crewing more directors and producers outside of the board, the complexity and excitement in the festival’s content this year displayed an obvious and consistent growth in production quality.
Sore Throat, directed by Ava Bunna and written by Quinn O’Connor, is an aptly named and visually compelling horror story. By gauging audience reactions, it is clear that this film succeeded in delivering compelling yet terrifying imagery. The film’s opening catches the eye quite well, drawing in audience interest from the start. From the corner of a bedroom, the protagonist listens as a soft, worried voicemail left by an unknown character plays. This character is never revealed, however, and the camera promptly cuts to a series of match cuts throughout city and neighborhood streets, featuring the protagonist striding purposefully across pavements. I was immediately intrigued by the camerawork and lighting employed in a myriad of shots. Both technologically detailed and polished, these two scenes in the opening helped to convey the intense emotion of its highly dramatic plot. What’s more, they amplified the quintessential shock factor in Sore Throat.
Though attention grabbing and visually impressive, Sore Throat falls just short of something which feels necessary in metaphorical filmmaking. There is a point at which too much ambiguity leaves audiences confused and, without the right details in a subliminal narrative, films with possible underlying meaning become blurry. It’s unclear whether there was an attempt at symbolism or metaphor in Sore Throat or whether the film was just plain fun. Ambiguity, applied tastefully and appropriately, can be an asset to filmmaking, yet Sore Throat overstepped the aforementioned point and crossed into uncertainty. Perhaps I’m just a curious critic, but the lack of context made Sore Throat feel more like a trailer than a film.
That being said, it makes for a fantastic preview. Gordon Horowitz’ VFX and O’Connor’s practical effects help to create a genuinely unsettling feeling and add to this film’s professional, more convincing horror sci-fi visuals. During the screening, I heard multiple audience members gasp at the titular ‘sore throat’. Furthermore, specific choices, such as Thomas Avona’s use of eye contact as the neighbor, served as interesting foreshadowing. Ultimately, while it was still unfortunately confusing, Sore Throat individualized itself within the festival as noticeably and purely artistic as well as for its outstanding production quality.
Quite the opposite of Sore Throat, 4085’s first sequel, The Kids Aren’t Alright 2: The Reunion was one of many directorial debuts of the night. In this heartfelt drama-comedy, writer and director Izzy Ster follows her previous film with just the right amount of continuity and callbacks – including a scene which tastefully echoed the first film by featuring Asher Wolf as a sad, drunken Brad – easily avoiding the cheesy sequel stereotype.
More than anything, this film is downright hilarious without detracting from its plot. At this point, balancing the emotional with the comical is a trademark of Izzy Ster’s. I’ve read and watched Ster’s work multiple times now, and can confidently say–she is genuinely going places as a writer.
This film may not have been as technologically impressive as some of the other short films at this year’s festival – more specifically, the sound mixing left something to be desired in its inconsistency. Yet, this film stood out among the six films of this night as perfectly cast. Despite the challenge of a partial recast, the actors who appeared in The Kids Aren’t Alright 2 performed incredibly, flaunting skilled comedic timing and delivery. Perhaps the more conservative technical effects cleared the stage for this cast.
Among the stellar performances in The Kids Aren’t Alright 2, I personally was captivated by two performers. In particular, Asher Wolf, who returned as Brad, stood out to me in their memorable individual scenes, including one which involved an amusing combination of driving, crying, and headbanging. Wolf’s acting, seemingly centered around facial expressions, amplifies the sentimental plot of The Kids Aren’t Alright 2.
Meanwhile, Brooke MacDougal, plays a convincing ‘middle-aged mother attempting to be cool’ with obvious ease. MacDougal continues to challenge herself by portraying characters of different ages, having demonstrated her talents in the Brand New Theatre’s One Act Festival earlier in the fall semester.
The Kids of Alright 2, in short, is a heartwarming story born out of a hysterically funny script and enlivened by synergetic acting from a gifted cast. In sitting down for a meal together, the four actors skillfully build a well-paced, casual dynamic, evoking all the dramedy of young adulthood in film. As I mentioned above, this film could’ve been better technologically – sound specifically was somewhat capricious and it was visually unadventurous – yet it holds itself up tremendously well because of an outstanding combination of writing, directing, and acting in an emotionally complex narrative.
In one word, Heist was fun. In a short amount of time, the narrative aspects of this film – writing, directing, acting – made me care about these characters. In her directorial debut, Charlotte Doyle introduced the film as “definitely the best day on set that [she’d] ever had.” Written by Izaak Garcia, this film’s charm comes primarily from its plot content. In fact, I’d argue that the writing, acting, and directing in Heist carried a film which was quite average in other aspects.
For one thing, the sound mixing in Heist was discrepant; there were a few moments in which the sound was clearly peaking. What’s more, Heist was visually dull. For what it was, though, this film felt like a simple yet sweet tribute to 4085 as a company. As far as I could tell, the film included the whole board as its cast, minus Doyle who was, of course, directing.
Overall, I enjoyed Heist – it showcased the talents of the 4085 board outside of directing and producing, and, similar to The Kids Aren’t Alright 2, featured one of the funnier scripts among the six films screened that night.
With that, Heist was a nice way to wrap up 4085’s main program of productions of their second annual film festival. This year’s event even ended with a surprise trailer, creating instant anticipation for the company’s first feature length film – All Alone, Together. Overall, 4085 has significantly improved both in terms of production quality as a company and as a group of storytellers, and we should all be avidly awaiting their feature debut.
Edited by Amy Wang