director/producer/editor
Richard Halpern
screenwriter
Art D'Alessandro
cinematographer
Jean Senelier
music
Kays Al-Atrakchi
cast
Robyn Cohen (Candice)
Kenny Johnson (Lou)
Ryan Fox (Ryan)
Kayo Zepeda (Manny)
mpaa rating: none
running
time: 81m
u.s.
release: 2/2/05
video
availability: TBA
official
website
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Zzyzx Road is a four-and-a-half-mile
stretch of sand and asphalt in the Mojave Desert. People usually
encounter the famous exit sign on the way to Las Vegas. The road
leads to nothing more exotic than a mostly abandoned settlement
(also named Zzyzx), though it hasn't stopped scores of travellers
from wondering what Zzyzx (it rhymes with Isaac's) is
or where the road will take them. Zzyzx, a low-budget
indie thriller, theorizes that it's a real end-of-the-alphabet
place -- a place where people take leave of their senses and
are reduced to the noir basics of greed, desperation,
and murderous intent.
Two guys -- macho jerk Lou
(Kenny Johnson of TV's The Shield), a Gulf War vet, and
his travel companion Ryan (Ryan Fox), a wimpy computer-store
clerk -- are taking the time-honored road trip to Vegas. Ryan's
seen mysterious stuff on the web about Zzyzx - something about
a Manson-like cult, skeletons found stacked on top of each other.
It sounds like a freaky place to stop along the way. Goofing
around behind the wheel to intimidate his skittish passenger,
Lou accidentally runs over a Native American guy stumbling along
the road. What will the guys do with the body? Especially when
the dead man's young newlywed (Robyn Cohen, from The
Life Aquatic) shows up looking for him?
Zzyzx is not a terribly original thriller; its influences
are obvious, from A Clockwork Orange (referenced in dialogue
and in a hallucination) to Lodge Kerrigan's Clean, Shaven
(the constant crackle of half-heard radio on the soundtrack)
to your choice of desert-baked tales of evil (Red Rock West,
The Hills Have Eyes). As I've said many times before,
noir movies like this would only be surprising if the
characters were all exactly as they seemed; as usual, those we
take to be evil may not be so bad, those we presume innocent
perhaps not so flawless.
The difference, as always,
is in the execution, and director Richard Halpern -- aided by
a fluidly conversational script by Art D'Alessandro -- frames
Zzyzx as a jittery, sweaty exercise in paranoia fuelled
by blood, drugs, and just plain fear. The small cast is beyond
reproach, creating a realistic spine for the action, and one
of the performances inspires hatred the same way Edward Norton's
famous turn in Primal Fear does -- you feel betrayed,
played. You believe in the situation, and the detail that
this road brings out strange behavior in people covers any potential
implausibilities. (Also, you look at this bleached, godforsaken
place and you have no trouble buying that otherwise sane people
might lose it here.) Zzyzx is a harsh, bitter and sometimes
grotesque thriller; it has no MPAA rating, but I'm guessing we're
looking at a hard R here, especially during the denouement, when
every available thread of clothing is doused with -- as the Clockwork-referencing
guys might say -- red red krovvy.
Where can you see Zzyzx?
If you don't live near a festival that happens to be showing
it, Richard Halpern has taken advantage of the pay-and-play capabilities
of the web by making the entire film available for a mere $2.99
on the official
website. The goal, apparently, is to spread the word
and make a bit of money back. As an inveterate supporter of indie
film, I anted up, fired it up on my iTunes, and found it to be
the best three bucks I've spent in a while. In a time when filmmakers
are circumventing traditional methods of distribution -- Steven
Soderbergh's new film Bubble recently debuted in theaters,
on cable, and on DVD the same week -- finely crafted exercises
like Zzyzx, which you otherwise wouldn't have seen
or heard of, have more of a fighting chance than they would've
ten years ago. In this case, the mode of delivery isn't all that
sets the film apart; it would play just as well for a theater
audience. Zzyzx is a good little film of the sort that
Hollywood should be making but isn't, and since exhibitors don't
even pretend to be interested in such films anymore, maybe the
future of indie film does lie on the information superhighway.
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