A Manhattan apartment turns into the rental from hell in this mindless mix of horror and true crime.
There were moments during “The Scary of Sixty-First” when I was convinced I was watching a botched horror-comedy. But while this witless slurry of onanism and conspiracy theories is certainly laughable, it is never, for one second, even remotely funny.
What, then, was its director and co-writer, Dasha Nekrasova, hoping to achieve beyond childish provocation? The dialogue is empty-headed, the visuals crudely exploitative and the plot — about two college friends who rent a swanky, suspiciously affordable apartment on Manhattan’s Upper East Side — so ludicrous as to be well nigh incoherent. All of which inspires some measure of sympathy for Madeline Quinn (who co-wrote the screenplay) and Betsey Brown as the roommates Noelle and Addie, and whose passive-aggressive dynamic is further ruptured by the arrival of a shifty stranger (Nekrasova).
Claiming that the apartment once belonged to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, the visitor draws Noelle into the web of online conspiracies surrounding his death. Addie, meantime — seemingly possessed by one of Epstein’s underage victims — begins sucking her thumb and engaging in multiple bouts of increasingly frenzied masturbation. These are mostly an excuse for Hunter Zimny’s camera to zoom repeatedly between her legs as if her underwear were magnetized.
Mashing pentagrams, Prince Andrew and autoerotic asphyxiation into a lubricious slop, “The Scary of Sixty-First” feels suffocating and flat. Nekrasova might have some insight into the mental vulnerabilities of the chronically screen-obsessed, but she has neither the artistry nor the filmmaking skills to deliver what the press notes suggest is a nod to Kubrick and Polanski. What we learn from both, however, is that giving offense should not appear to be your sole motivation.
The Scary of Sixty-First
Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 21 minutes. In theaters.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
