We’re all guilty of living vicariously, of envying others. But that relatively natural behavior is a long way from stalking, from possessing and inhabiting someone else’s life. The kidnapping at the center of writer/director Ben Cresciman’s Sun Choke certainly crosses that line, but it’s not surprising, considering the isolation and psychological torment the film’s protagonist endures. Sun Choke is psychological horror at its most removed, all washed-out cinematography from Matthew Rudenberg and detached framing. As much as it is a tale of unrestrained voyeurism, the film pointedly distances the audience from the characters, forcing a clinical judgment of their actions rather than inciting empathy.
Cresciman’s main character, however, could use some emotional support. Janie (Sarah Hagan) lives in a sprawling, modern (read: cold and characterless) house in the L.A. hills. Her only companion is Irma (Barbara Crampton), an authoritarian caretaker who structures Janie’s days around a rigid schedule of smoothie waterboarding, stress-inducing yoga and questionable therapy sessions that generally revolve around the use of a tuning fork as a means of punishment—all in the name of expelling negative energies through meditative methods. Janie’s desire to find an escape, emotional and physical, is understandable.
What exact events led to this peculiar arrangement is unclear. Cresciman’s script is purposefully obtuse, aiming for a combination of the abstract, trippy and avant-garde. Some manner of mental illness—involving mental breakdowns and violent outbursts—has confined Janie to this aggressively sheltered life, but she is making progress toward some semblance of normalcy. Despite her overridingly oppressive approach to Janie’s care, Irma has begun to allow her charge to leave the house for a few hours. Mostly, Janie just drives around, but one day she sees a woman who appears to be her exact twin. She isn’t, however. She doesn’t even look like Janie. That first glance was either a hallucination or, more likely, a combination of projecting and symbolism. Either way, Savannah (Sara Malakul Lane) becomes Janie’s new obsession and her life becomes something to aspire to.
Cresciman’s approach with Sun Choke is much more focused on the technical aspects of the film rather than the acting. The script itself is light on dialogue, and, frankly, the characters of Janie and Irma are fairly one-note in their respective innocence and dominance. Hagan (who is likely best remembered as Millie on “Freaks and Geeks”) does bring plenty of wide-eyed innocence to the role, but her voice, more than anything else, does wonders to accentuate the infantilization of her character. The bulk of the film, though, is subject to Cresciman’s atmospherics, the pointed symbolism, synth score and hallucinatory, grotesque sequences turning Janie’s nightmarish situation into an overbearing exercise in psych-horror.
Janie’s voyeur field trips, in particular, confuse Cresciman’s exact message. Savannah so obviously represents the normalcy that Janie desires. Without even having seen her as Janie briefly, she represents an alternative, the life Janie could be living. But Janie doesn’t just watch her drive around the neighborhood. She becomes a literal peeping Tom, spying through windows on everything from Savannah’s domesticity to her sex life. But the voyeuristic sex scenes don’t provide enough narrative direction to overcome their gratuity.
Sun Choke is a very stylized drama about mental health and the struggle for control. The small-scale focus of the film and its vignette approach—not detailing the whole of Janie’s backstory—illustrates a canny appreciation for ambiguity in tales of insanity. For a sophomore effort, its shows technical savvy on Cresciman’s part, but his desire to convey such extreme isolation goes so far as to make the film a stilted horror that never connects emotion with the trauma. If the audience doesn’t know the history of Janie’s mental state and has little opportunity to relate to her emotionally, what connection beyond voyeurism can Sun Choke hope to have?
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