The classic American trope used constantly in movies since the forties is if you are really good at your job, then you are really bad at a personal life, and vice versa, if you are good at having a personal life then you are bad at your job. Kris Williams, played outstandingly by Hannah Einbender, is really good at her job ergo, she’s really bad at personal relationships and personal connections. That is very well established in this. She meets recluse former star of the “Camp Miasma” horror films, Billy Presely to make her star in a reboot of the horror series. Billy gets inspiration from Norma Desmond from “Sunset Boulevard”- a benchmark character that can’t differentiate between reality and cinema. The problem is both can’t decipher reality and the movie itself can’t either. The film itself is a menage of three distinct themes each budging and crashing into each other. The first is the classic trope already mentioned, along with the notion that obsession with movies can blur the lines of reality and make you desire to be in the world more than reality while, and an acute wink at the frictions and stresses in making a film in Hollywood post-new hollywood era.  It’s a film about making a film while being a film that shows the dangers of film obsession. There is a reason why Camp Trivoli- the supposedly real camp where they shoot the horror films is obvious in the studio and in a sound stage with a painted background. This is a movie about a movie while being in a whirlwind–not of delusion but the itching to be in the film, to reject reality if you had the chance. The result is a wonderful cascade of soft and hard cinema. It’s about the obsession of film from the inside out. From the viewers to also the makers of a film. It’s about how fixation and consumerism alters you, psychologically.  

To point out- Billy Presely can’t achieve sexual bliss in the real world but could in acting in a sex scene in making the horror film. Kris can’t commit to one person in the real world nor can be comfortable being herself until she’s in the delusion of being in the world of the movie she wants to make with Billy. 

        The entire film is to recognize it is a film. The soft dissolves and soft pastels are in it to harkening to the eighties technique. The baptism of blood that all final girls seem to go through.  A pleasant evaluation to the constant film consumer and filmmaker to show the danger lies into not wanting reality. 

       It’s not a flawless film, the duration is longer than what needs to suffice and indulgent just to be indulgent-which you would think it gives you a pass to be with a movie about those meta themes with sub par editing, but you prefer the weird this is your kind of film and being love with film and the process and result. 8/10