The Blazing World (2021)
Directed by Carlson Young
Ever since Margaret was six years old, she has been haunted by the memory of watching her sister drown during an explosive fight between her parents. As a young woman, she slides further into her twisted inner life, ultimately finding herself on the brink of suicide. Through an epic journey down the smokiest and scariest corridors of her imagination, she tries to exorcise the demons pushing her closer and closer to the edge.
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There are other visual cues lifted from movies like Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining,” like when the water comes pouring out like blood from the hotel elevator banks, and Guillermo del Toro's "Pan's Labyrinth," in the monster that flashes on-screen more than a few times.
Young has vision, that’s for sure, and the collection of influences and inspirations that dot “The Blazing World” run from “Alice in Wonderland” and “Pan’s Labyrinth” to “Coraline” and “Hansel and Gretel,” with a touch of the wacky 2019 social satire “Greener Grass.”
Cue a lengthy progression of variously unhinged dream tableaux, during which parallel-universe Margaret must complete a series of “Pan’s Labyrinth”-like quests that may or may not reunite her with Elizabeth.
It's a draining mishmash of Intro to Psych lectures mixed with dream journal excerpts swirled together with some not-so-subtle Pan's Labyrinth rip-offs.
While Young manages to keep things interesting through a chunk of the first act, the whole experience starts to fall apart when Margaret steps through the rabbit hole, embarking on the film’s reality-bending trip clearly inspired by Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, and Pan’s Labyrinth among others.
That said I'll admit I found myself thinking even more of Guillermo Del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth while watching The Blazing World than I did having to go all the way back to original descendant Lewis Carroll -- Pan and Blazing are both, after all, bound up in the sputtering sickened imaginations of what may just be a brain shutting down.
Visually reminding of Tarsem Singh’s work (seriously, if you haven’t seen The Fall , rent it whenever it becomes available to stream) and almost reminding of coming-of-age fantasy films of the ’80s, there’s something magical here that’s poking through the dirt.
Even when the low-budget seams show infrequently, Young and crew manage to create a world that is enjoyably reverential to classic sources like Alice in Wonderland , The Wizard of Oz and even recent films like The Fall .
Unable to find any relief, and teased with the suggestion that she can somehow rescue her lost sister, Margaret eventually gives in and enters the portal, slipping into a dizzying fairytale dream world that seems to have been stitched together from several of David Lynch’s movies and Tarsem’s The Fall .
There are obvious Alice In Wonderland references, alongside bits of David Lynch, Tarsem Singh, Pan’s Labyrinth, The Shining and even Tarkovsky’s Stalker.
Carlson Young’s directorial debut (in which she also stars), The Blazing World , reminded me, above all else, of 1986's Labyrinth .
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Young has vision, that’s for sure, and the collection of influences and inspirations that dot “The Blazing World” run from “Alice in Wonderland” and “Pan’s Labyrinth” to “Coraline” and “Hansel and Gretel,” with a touch of the wacky 2019 social satire “Greener Grass.”
Like Henry Selick’s adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline , The Blazing World sets its own course through an Alice’s Wonderlandesque journey of self-discovery with a bold, colourful aesthetic.
It's an indulgent sequence that really takes its time to build up to the tragedy, not unlike Lars von Trier’s “Antichrist” in spirit, but poorly paced and staged.