Together with her sophomore function “Useless Lover,” director and co-writer Grace Glowicki deploys a minimalist strategy to a well-recognized, high-concept premise. The movie follows a lonely gravedigger (additionally Glowicki) who makes use of experimental science to deliver her foppish lover again to life after he’s killed at sea. On paper, “Useless Lover” partly evokes Common’s beloved 1931 “Frankenstein” adaptation, however as a result of Glowicki shot the movie fully on a Toronto soundstage, it extra carefully resembles an experimental theater manufacturing than a bog-standard low-budget horror movie.
The in-studio backdrop all however calls for bountiful creativity from Glowicki’s small solid and crew, which “Useless Lover” reveals in spades. Cinematographer Rhayne Vermette regularly spotlights actors in order that they’re bathed in darkness, which renders the movie’s assorted environments, from a graveyard to the open waters, suggestive playgrounds, with solely set items to fill in a handful of blanks. This staginess not solely lends a vigorous high quality to the manufacturing, but in addition focuses the viewers’s consideration on each the narrative and its building. “Useless Lover” perceive that deliberate artificiality, when utilized correctly, can be as immersive as the most costly phantasm.
Likewise, Glowicki and her staff make use of varied sensible components — props, costumes, make-up, prosthetics, in-camera visible results — to contribute to the (un)actuality of “Useless Lover.” The movie’s sparse, handmade 16-mm aesthetic, which visually recollects influences starting from early German Expressionism to the work of Man Maddin, primarily sells the movie’s outlandish fantastical conceit, regardless of its spinoff nature.
Alas, the impressed manufacturing primarily serves performances and narrative that reside in a mileage-may-vary comedic register. “Useless Lover” treats the gravedigger’s seek for love, stymied by her dirty garments and a lingering corpse stench, with some gravity, however her relatable needs are in deliberate rigidity with Glowicki’s exaggerated efficiency. She performs the gravedigger like a attractive model of the screeching housewife caricature that the Monty Python troupe would play in “Flying Circus” sketches. Her over-the-top cockney accent talking in melodramatic dialogue drives a lot of the comedy in her efficiency, which in the end wears skinny over the course of the movie’s transient runtime.
The four-person solid, with everybody however Glowicki taking part in a number of roles, delivers equally histrionic performances as gossips, sailors, clergymen, and unholy scientific creations. (Solely the gravedigger’s posh dandy lover, performed by co-writer Ben Petrie, and Lowen Morrow’s flip as an opium-addled widower, display minor vocal restraint.) Everybody, particularly Glowicki, evinces a sure fearless physicality, the sort that naturally emanates from drama departments and theater troupes world wide. The entire solid in all probability deserves some recognition for “committing to the bit,” so to talk. The issue, after all, is that the bit itself is caught in a single gear. Even because the difficult plot evolves, the characters and the performances stay frustratingly static. Solely Glowicki sometimes modulates her appearing, particularly within the movie’s second half. When she does, her apparent expertise shines by means of.
The movie’s self-consciously campy tone don’t assist issues a lot. In its worst moments, “Useless Lover” feels prefer it’s attempting to reverse engineer a cult movie. What that interprets to, although, is loads of deliberately hammy line deliveries and overaffected actions. When it’s not working by means of foolish facial expressions or “kooky” intercourse scenes, it leans into gross-out, exploitation-style results or “Benny Hill”-style high-speed actions. “Useless Lover” fares finest when the writing embraces wordplay, or at the least a humorous flip of phrase. (“Fetid stench” and “teste renewal” are good for a chuckle.) The epistolary part of the movie, through which the smooth-talking lover sends letters to the gravedigger about his journey to an experimental fertility clinic, is a pleasant change of tempo for a movie that continually skews wacky, for higher or worse.
Sarcastically, at any time when “Useless Lover” shows its romantic aspect, it reveals a tenderness that feels stronger than its comedic instincts. It’s clear that Glowicki and firm don’t see the gravedigger’s amorous craving as a joke, even when the character constantly acts like one. It’s mildly heartwarming when the lover woos the gravedigger and accepts her overwhelmingly nasty odor as a function of her magnificence, even when it’s underneath false pretenses. (In any case, empty guarantees can nonetheless be significant within the second.) It’s comparably tragic when the lover’s caddish intentions come to gentle. Glowicki typically returns to the affecting picture of a spooky moonlit evening, the place disquiet and ardor can doubtlessly go hand in hand, to convey the the depths of the gravedigger’s loneliness. On the very least, “Useless Lover” comprehends the sensation of getting a quick style of one thing you’ve desired for a very long time and the way its absence can drive somebody to insanity.
Although the sheer creativeness baked into the manufacturing of “Useless Lover” is definitely admirable, its extended, pressured zaniness sadly taints all the pieces it touches. With that stated, there are positively individuals who will take to this sort of movie like a duck to water. It’s vital for them to see it, cherish it, and unfold the phrase to like-minded weirdos in every single place.
Grade: C+
“Useless Lover” premiered on the 2025 Sundance Movie Competition. It’s at present in search of U.S. distribution with Yellow Veil Photos dealing with its sale.
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