Anxiety 2023
Sinopsis
A story about two sisters – Małgorzata, who is single by choice, and her younger sister, Łucja, a mother of two and an assistant in Małgorzata’s law firm. The women embark on their first first trip in many years. It quickly turns out that one of them is terminally ill and her destination is Switzerland, where euthanasia is possible.
Pameran Pemain
- Magdalena Cielecka.
- Malgorzata.
- Marta Nieradkiewicz.
- Sabine Timoteo.
- Sofia.
- Maciej Kosiacki.
- Stanislaw Sawicki.
- Tomek’s child.
- Rafal Miazek.
- Krzysztof Zarzycki.
- Mirella Burcewicz.
- Girl with a backpack.
- Natalia Zborowska.
- Lech Mackiewicz.
- Barbara Wypych.
Ulasan
To many of us, the pandemic of 2020 now feels like a fever dream- vivid enough to still fuck with you, but distant enough not to be kicking in your front door anymore. There are signs all over the place now of the change wrought by that terrible time, but it’s in the past. We don’t have to worry about it anymore. Right? Surely not.
As for me, I can’t get my mind off of it because I sat down to watch writer-director Eric Stanze’s newest feature, Anxiety, and I was transported back to 2020’s darkest days thanks to stark imagery, a blitzkrieg of news footage, and a compelling human story that could easily be any one of us.
Renee (Jackie Kelly; Tennessee Gothic) is a recovering alcoholic with a troubled past. She’s only a few months sober when the Covid-19 pandemic strikes and shuts the world down. Left alone with her own mind, the addiction demon quickly reasserts its authority and goes to work on Renee’s already damaged and anxiety-ridden psyche. As a video editor, she’s used to living a solitary life, but Renee isn’t prepared for the erosion of her sanity a bit at a time as the shelter-at-home order lengthens and the need for a drink becomes an all-out nightmare.
Anxiety is one of the most aptly-titled films you’ll ever see as it induces buckets worth of the stuff. Remember when I said 2020 felt like a fever dream? Anxiety captures the essence of the fever dream perfectly with a mix of jarring visual symbolism and real, raw human angst that escalates with every passing scene. The overall effect is such that you really taste Renee’s growing anxiousness about the world around her and the handful of people in her inner circle.
That might not sound much like horror on the surface, but it damn sure is. Sure, there’s no masked killer or drippy monster to contend with, but we all know that the truly horrific stuff is the shit that comes crashing down out of nowhere and utterly wrecks the daily workings of your everyday life. Anxiety is instantly relatable because it not only deals with universal subject matter that we can all empathize with; it also does a stellar job of tackling the subject of addiction and the very real powers of outright hallucination that those demons possess.
