death trip (2021)
a witch’s spell: you know what’s happening, you
know your weaknesses, you know you’re going down and
you feel that sharpening decline. so you sing about
it.
death trip is hysterics upon finding a dead
body followed by getting drunk and partying with
townies, a man smashing bottles, a song interrupted, a
lethargic finale; it gets to the central question of
whether one can really have self-actualization without
other people. it’s a work that understands the meaning
of the slasher formula and uses its own act of
repetition as cultural incantation trapped between the
human and the natural and erasing the separation
entirely.
it’s about the way we retreat to scattered yet rich
internal lives as a means of evading harm from the
elements around us and the ways that hurt invariably
seems to follow us there. the film asks whether this
hurt comes from others or from ourselves, and whether
such a distinction is valuable or even possible. the
perils of your personal world are well known if you
spend enough time in it. this fear is encompassed in
security and exists as a tangible presence here — you
can feel it in dreams, in a portrait of a stranger
framed by a door left ajar, in the whir of a ceiling
fan spinning too fast. these things are important.
slashers are, after all, less about the slashing than
they are the abrupt addition of a badly-timed
thunderstorm, the uneasy sparseness of a summer camp,
the bursts of nervous humor that punctuate a nameless
dread that cuts deeper with each labored exhale. these
are the things that are the least comprehensible — the
things that cut the deepest.
one of the best films I’ve ever seen. the next time I
feel like I should finally see inland empire,
I’m just going to watch this again.
this is hardly the throwback slasher it may seem, but
if it is, it’s a throwback to savage weekend,
nightmares in a damaged brain, the parts people
don’t talk about when they talk about friday the
13th — films rich with moments of unbalance,
cold cruelty in comfort and shelter. seeing this film
is a deeply unsettling experience that completely
caught me off guard — not only because it is part of
the small pantheon of aforementioned slashers that really
get under my skin, but because death trip
emanates from a place I recognize and frequently
inhabit. it’s about the mundane terrors of being alive
while being female. you notice things but don’t know
if you’re supposed to notice these things and you
can’t figure out what to make of them anyway. all the
while, the truth becomes more obvious and more opaque.
the pieces don’t add up as much as they point to
something terrifying that you probably already knew.
you can’t help but kind of like the gravity bong guy,
despite everything.
of course, it’s tempting to namedrop a bunch of other
films in lieu of really saying anything but that’s not
to say death trip is derivative in any way —
the repetition is more craft (in the fullest sense of
the term) than cannibalization. it’s a new spell that
evokes its source as a mere step in a series of
endless repetitions. for that it’s a major work that
deserves consideration beside the blair witch
project and malatesta, films which share
a low res mega evil patina: a serious dedication to
being a total bummer and an unwillingness to allow the
circle to close.
this film is a cold embrace without admonishment, a
living force to which I can mutually relate on my own
terms; the closest thing to a mother I’ve ever had in
a slasher film. the central concern here is negative
transcendence — it regards the adage that hell is
other people as obviously true, but is careful to make
it known that our own hell can in fact be a useful
place to inhabit. the craft is, essentially, the
transference of magick between people. nothing ever
occurs in a vacuum.
now tell me do you care for me?
once I cared for you
honey, come and be my enemy
so I can love you true
a sick boy, sick boy fadin out
I love it to be cruel
baby, whip me in the heat
turn me loose on you
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