The Reflected Self (2024)
a review by Evan Landon
When it comes to low budget indie movies, the truth is that a script has to find a way to work around that fact. Covering up where you lack and highlighting your strengths becomes the ultimate goal for any good filmmaker. Sure, there are as many prevailing movies that go for it all without said budget, but then your entire cast and crew has to go through rewrites after rewrites, ultimately having too many hands in the pot. In major studios, producers, marketing agents, and studio heads will waste more money on reshoots and hiring a dozen writers than just going with the original story the writer who created it could even fathom. Does that make any sense to you? Nope.
What movies that do not have the luxury of a major studio budget must do is utilize the most important part of any story and that is keeping that original idea at it's fundamental level and building around it. That is exactly what The Reflected Self does; it uses it's main players in a setting that can benefit the plot which is not a very simple one. Here, a man and his sister move into a house they inherited, but then the man is tormented by visions of a ghost that plagues the home. What starts off as a ghost story in a haunted house quickly unveils a story of a person struggling to cope with loss, how we as humans process grief, and our own overall sense of reality.
If this sounds like a cool concept, you're damn right it does! Where it lacks, the film purposefully and successfully pulls off such an arduous endeavor for it's viewer. The three actors (yes, only three) are able to weave the tapestry of this film without using big budget special effects or strenuous CGI which it certainly does not need. Writer/director Kelvin Richards really capitalizes on his abilities in his latest full-length effort, all the while never letting his audience to remain in one state of mind. The settings change as much as the characters do, unwinding a yarn that takes a minute for everyone to ponder. Thus, the title The Reflected Self.
I would be remiss if I did not mention the pacing, to which seems a bit more erratic than the score by Luca Fagagnini is somber, yet more than apropos to give a sense of eeriness that coalesces with the picture. It is almost as if every time reality shifts for the main character, changing positions of abnormality in an ultimately confusing world, is the one that they inhabit at that time. It is almost as if through our subconscious, we notice that even our footsteps cause as much change as the lighting when things shift. These are the subtle nuances that I spoke of earlier. If I were to speak to the writing, the script seems tailor made to keep the audience confused which it is supposed to, so that should never be admonished, by any means. There is an issue with how the second act struggles to keep the viewer engaged with an almost 10 minute long soliloquy in attempt to explain the plot that serves to only bewilder viewers, yet is completely undone in the final cut scenes.
At a an estimated budget of £50,000, The Reflected Self is streamed on Amazon Prime where it will likely grab a new audience of psychological thriller fans and, all-in-all, there are much worse movies out there to watch. It won a bunch of awards last year including, but not limited to, the Indie Filmmaker Awards for Best Picture, Megaflix for Best Thriller, and a finalist in the Lytham International Film Festival.
If you like psychological thrillers that engages with it's audience in each and every scene that is not really on anyone else's radar, this is definitely the movie for you.
3 Out Of 5