SIMON KILER Review
Being lost and alone in the labyrinthine city streets of Paris is a less than ideal, but not exactly, terrible fate. However, being lost and alone in the labyrinthine city streets of Paris while also succumbing to your darker tendencies is objectively even worse. That is exactly the fate that befalls American vagabond Simon (Brady Corbet), a young man who flees to the City of Lights after having his heart broken stateside. As with other Antonio Campos films, SIMON KILLER is a movie that subdues itself in bad vibes and killer style and climaxes with throttling violence at the hands of an individual trapped in the darkness of their surrounding and own unhinged psychologies. From that description alone, you’ll probably know by now if this movie is for you or not.
Beginning with the slow and ethereal visuals of soft lines of reds and blues crisscrossing over one another like those pleasant and peaceful interludes found in PUNCH DRUNK LOVE, Campos once again establishes his deft touch with creating a discombobulating world that nevertheless showcases his own unique visual voice. Simon, like other Campos characters, is already somewhat aloof when the colors disperse and the director’s camera finds the young man rambling on about his current situation to a Parisian-based friend granting him a place to stay. In what will become a recurring stylistic touch, Campos lets Simon’s singular conversation play out as the camera slowly (SLOWLY) zooms away from the man, letting the audience sit and stir with the uncomfortable protagonist. In these moments, Campos and cinematographer Joe Anderson numb the increasingly erratic actions of their troubled young traveler among scenes that have the camera either slowly panning or zooming among a conversation. This technique is visually enticing and occasionally lends to the film’s overall foreboding atmosphere; but it is also time consuming, leading some scenes on as characters ramble or simply mull about.
Simon’s descent into unchecked anger, while filled with an unmistakable air of menace, also goes along some familiar beats. As the film enticingly doles out the smallest bits of history and context behind Simon’s overseas excursion (hint: Simon may not be that good of a guy to begin with), Campos, who also concocted the script, sends Simon along an increasingly grey journey where he finds an uneasy romance in the care of prostitute Victoria (Mati Diop), which only seems to unhinge the slightly obsessive and lovelorn young man even more. From there, blackmail and abuse eventually rear their ugly heads as Simon makes one terrible decision after another as the audience can only sit and watch. Like other “slow car wreck films” ala UNCUT GEMS, Campos knows how to get an audience to squirm in discomfort using dialogue, sound effects, and an ever shifting sense of framing to devilish effect. However, while the director/writer is no doubt confident in his stylistic touches, SIMON KILLER doesn’t always benefit from a cold and calculated style that dampens the impact of the film’s increasingly erratic events.
As with his later film, THE DEVIL ALL THE TIME, Campos deals exclusively in the macabre and depressing in this film, leaving little room for humanity or levity. There are not too many “good” characters in this film, with rather everyone being depressing or volatile (or both in the case of our protagonist), and those who are “good” are only there to be used and abused in some form or fashion. Now, it’s never a bad thing necessarily to be a movie that deals with only dreadful situations, but in SIMON KILLER dread is the only thing being offered here which overwhelms a lot of the more interesting visual touches that Campos wields. From about 10 minutes into the movie, one can figure out more or less just where SIMON KILLER will lead: to only more dread, which overcasts the rest of the film with a kind of a resigned aura on the part of the viewer. It’s not exactly a fun time.
To their credit, the performers that Campos wrangles in fall in line with the bad vibes of the film they inhabit. Indeed, the most interesting aspect of SIMON KILLER is the fact that it centers around two actors who would later go on to become directors of pretty interesting films. Brady Corbet, future director of THE CHILDHOOD OF A LEADER and VOX LUX, displays his skills as an actor in the central performance using his baby face to mask the boiling and hurt man-child underneath. At times scattered and frantic, Corbet is never not in control of his uneasy presence, bringing to life a character that is pitiable and detestable in equal measure. As his put-upon love interest, Mati Diop, who would later go on to create the wonderful ATLANTICS, is given a bit less to do as an object of affection that soon becomes a bastion of abuse. Diop brings an approachable softness to her tragic character but it’s not enough to overcome Campos’ and Simon’s violent intentions for her.
Trapped in between its low hum indie interludes and its more ferocious dips into an unsettling character piece, SIMON KILLER makes for an interesting watch that fails to bridge the gap between those two cliffs. In a way, Campos would improve upon his apparent mission to depress the viewer with unrelenting darkness in the slightly better THE DEVIL ALL THE TIME but for now, with this film, finding never-ending darkness in The City of Lights will seem to do the trick for the filmmaker.
2.5/5
