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AGNES
Director: Mickey Reece Cast: Molly C. Quinn, Jake Horowitz, Ben Hall, Sean Gunn, Chris Sullivan, Mary Buss, Hayley McFarland, Chris Browning, Rachel True, Zandy Hartig, Ginger Gilmartin, Bruce Davis MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:33 Release Date: 12/10/21 (limited; digital & on-demand) |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | December 9, 2021 Not-too-cleanly divided in two, the story of Agnes begins as a fairly standard horror tale and suddenly shifts into something else entirely. In both halves, co-writer/director Mickey Reece shows some confidence in his off-kilter characters, style, and use of humor, but together, the two sections don't form a unified whole. That's likely part of the point here, as the story eventually focuses on Mary (Molly C. Quinn), one of the nuns at an isolated convent where it seems one of the flock is possessed by a demon, and her search for meaning in a world without any apparent purpose. She's mostly in the backdrop in the first half, which follows Father Donaghue (Ben Hall), a cynical priest with a good track record of exorcisms (and a child sexual abuse accusation lingering over him), and Benjamin (Jake Horowitz, amusingly dry), a recent seminary graduate ready to take his vows as a priest. The nun in question, of course, is Agnes (Hayley McFarland), who curses in a deep voice and sends objects flying when the demon takes control. Donaghue and Benjamin travel to the convent, have debates about customs and how to proceed with the Mother Superior (Mary Buss), and get to work expelling the demon. There's a considerable gap in the narrative here that, because Reece and co-screenwriter John Selvidge establish the exorcism story with some intriguing personality clashes and mystery, remains frustratingly unseen or otherwise undisclosed. With the exorcism ending with anticlimactic uncertainty, we then follow Mary, trying to live an ordinary life with bills, a job, and a scuzzy boss (played by Chris Sullivan). An unimpressive stand-up comedian (played by Sean Gunn), who once had a relationship with Agnes, figures into this, too, and suggests that whatever had a hold of the nun might have infected Mary. If there's a connection, it doesn't really start to take shape until the movie's final scene. It offers a pretty clever metaphor about faith, which Mary, dealing with the deepest of griefs, didn't find as a nun and can't uncover in a regular life. There is, undoubtedly, something to the equation of the story's division, especially after Reece and Selvidge put forth their thesis in such blunt terms in the final minutes. The big starts and stops of this tale, though, ensure that Agnes feels more like a deception of our expectations than an actually realized story. Copyright © 2021 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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