Bad Times Are Good: Magic Magic (2013, dir. Sebastián Silva, US/Chile) by Matt Olsen
Previously in this venue, I wrote about the fantastic true crime-documentary-reenactment-musical hybrid, London Road. At the time, I mentioned that no one I had ever met had seen or even heard of the film. As far as I know, that situation remains constant.
Anyone who has ever dedicated a substantial amount of their free time to watching movies will have a similar story of at least one film that seems to exist for them alone. If that aforementioned anyone is me, such a list includes 2013’s paranoia-drenched tension nightmare, Magic Magic.
The director Sebastián Silva first came to my attention with his 2009 film, The Maid, which was, for me, the best film of that year. (I seem to have an inexplicable obsession for movies about maids, butlers, servants, housecleaners, etc., though, so your results may vary.) Around the time of the impending release of Magic Magic, Silva was receiving a lot of positive press. But, for a different movie, entirely. Well, maybe not entirely. While Magic Magic was in some suspended state of production, Silva gathered some of that film’s cast along with a few friends and family members, headed out to the desert, and quickly shot another low-budget, loosely-scripted film called Crystal Fairy & the Magical Cactus. Both would end up being released within a few months of each other.
In the relative storm of media attention for Crystal Fairy, Magic Magic was overshadowed, if not wholly ignored. This is no slight on Crystal Fairy, which is genuinely decent and a persuasive example of successful shoestring cinema, but, of the two, Magic Magic is a much bolder and emotionally compelling venture.
The film revolves around Alicia, a young American woman visiting her friend, Sara, who is now living in Chile with a boyfriend, Agustín. The three set out driving to a remote island rental home accompanied by Agustín’s irritated sister, Barbara and his irritating friend, Brink. En route, Sara receives a call and has to return home, promising to rejoin Alicia and the group, in a few days. Fragile and bewildered, Alicia suddenly finds herself in a foreign land, amongst strangers. Things go badly.
The five main cast members are uniformly excellent but special mention must be made to Juno Temple, widely known these days from Ted Lasso, who carries the lead role of Alicia. She’s as vulnerable as an open wound but with a strange, beleaguered determination which leads her to, at least, attempt to continually confront her fear. As the audience’s avatar, she’s an unusually complex character, equally relatable and difficult to fathom. The script asks a lot (A LOT) of her and Temple never gives anything less than an utterly unguarded and thrilling performance. If there are echoes of Repulsion in the film, Temple is absolutely on par with Catherine Deneuve and perhaps even more captivating.
The most surprising bit of casting is Michael Cera in the role of Blink, the often obnoxious, always creepy friend. It’s a character unlike almost anything else he’s done in his career – crude, aggressive, irritating, scattered, and unpredictable. He’s small and always in motion, like an especially bothersome housefly, buzzing into everyone’s personal space. And yet, he still finds a way to be genuinely menacing.
The movie is not a good time. Like the best psychological horror films, it leads the audience into an uneasy state of unresolved discomfort. That’s a hard sell but for anyone who enjoys occasionally being pushed to feel bad by their media, Magic Magic is a triumph of anxiety.
Matt Olsen is a largely unemployed part-time writer and even more part-time commercial actor living once again in Seattle after escaping from Los Angeles like Kurt Russell in that movie about the guy who escapes from Los Angeles.