Wrath: Review

17th November 2020

By Hugues Porquier.

“Wrath” is a short movie, conceived, written and photographed in two months during the quarantine in Michigan, USA in March 2020. Co-directed by Meg Case and her partner Brad Porter, this movie takes us into the intimacy of Emily (played by Meg Case), a young woman who spends her quarantine alone in her apartment.

Throughout the film, we witness to the deterioration of Emily’s mental state as the days go by. We follow her in her daily life, in her habits, as close as possible to her intimacy.

We bathe in a warm apartment, full of green plants and very sunny. A place that may seem quite suitable for living in quarantine. But this daily life will gradually be upset by the appearance of hallucinations and anxiety attacks due to a growing paranoia.

A paranoia fed by loneliness, fear of the outside world and Covid-19. Through this fear of the virus, we find, more globally, the fear of death. This fear will be fed by the successive appearance of several dead animals but also by the presence of worms, often product of hallucinations, which can symbolise decomposition.

These feelings of loneliness, anguish and paranoia will be very rightly interpreted by Meg Case who will allow us to fully live the movie. Throughout the film, the different music and sound editing perfectly suits these feelings, especially the anguish. One reproach can be made, it’s a slight lack of rhythm, which can easily be explained by the near absence of dialogue. Fortunately, a dynamic editing allows to keep some rhythm.

The photographs and shots are very aesthetic. The shades of color, ranging from a simple natural light to the dewy light from the LED used for the plants allow us to immerse ourselves in this story of a disturbing realism but also quite magical. A few years ago, a situation like this one, including a global virus and a global quarantine, could have seemed imagined by an overly imaginative mind.

Today, it’s this promiscuity with reality which is one of the greatest strengths of the movie. All over the world, a majority of the population has experienced this situation of quarantine. A situation that is often strongly linked with a feeling of loneliness, confinement and anxiety about a new situation that is not yet well understood and whose outcome is still uncertain.

It’s a very strange short movie that can create the desire to be more creative and active during this second wave of quarantine.

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