Cleaners (2011) Review

Before anybody starts to question whether I’m a friend of Douglas Reese or not, I will just lay out there that I have spoken with the guy before and being called a casual acquaintance would be acceptable. While I don’t personally know the guy I can admit that I previously spoke with him on the Internet Movie Database message boards and that’s how I saw the majority of the non-budget films he’s made but I have never really spoken to him to such a degree where my opinions on his work would be biased. I have watched almost all of Reese’s shorts and three of his features and while he has sparks of trademarks and quirks that re-appear throughout his work he has made some pretty awful things. In particular, he’s at his worst when he’s obviously trying to please the big crowds. When he first posted his Cleaners movie over on IMDB he was savagely attacked by the responses. Nobody over there really gave it a chance as they slammed it for having messy editing, grainy cinematography, and jarring sound. My guess is that they did not want to give it a chance because of what they saw as technical shortcomings or they didn’t watch the whole film. I watched the entire thing and I was a bit confused by what I had watched to be frank. The movie was very depressing and was drenched in dark atmosphere but I couldn’t find love in it. I responded to him and told him what I thought and patiently waited for his next film to be shared. When he posted a new film called Snake and I watched it [not a very good one] I started to notice things about Reese’s directing and the way he edits. From films before and after Cleaners he has done he showed competent, “normal” editing skill so why was it that Cleaners felt like it was so messy? And when I watched it again I realized that the terrible editing was really some brilliant film editing.

Cleaners starts off with two kids making out and we can barely here what they’re saying because there is an intense sound of fans going off in the background. Eventually we hear the girl say that they are going to “kill Douglas” and before we know it the film’s title shows up and we hear an annoying guitar riff beat to our eardrums. We then see a shot of a freezer full of clothing and garbage and a loud environment of fans, heavy metal, and a television show beating even harder on our eardrums. You think that at first its just all terrible sound editing but realize as the film goes on that the sounds and the actually cuts in the film are all very consistent and natural. We see that cut from that freezer to the lead female character [Denelle Kjellman] rushing into the kitchen for a Swiffer mop and once she leaves the room Reese lingers on the kitchen table longer than he should before cutting away to the bathroom where the girl is now seen intensely mopping the floor. Throughout this scene we get random cuts and the sound never continues on in these cuts. They are always jarring and sudden and never feel like they have a flow. We eventually cut into a living room and watch as the lead male character [Jeremiah Hall] scrubs around a television set. The terrible music blares like nails on a chalkboard. Whenever the scene cuts the music never continues on it cuts with it. And then Reese goes back to the girl now in the hallway with the mop as she brushes it across the floor. And then Reese once again replays the same entire shot and the only first thing that would pop into the viewer’s head is how awful that piece of editing was. The trick to realizing that it’s not awful editing is to analyze all of it after having seen the entire movie.

When Reese is asked what Cleaners is about he always tells them that its about dominance. On the surface you could call him crazy since the film is basically 80% cleaning and snorting drugs but the movie really is about dominance. And in order to get that you have to look closely at how he edits and photographs scenes or the way he stages or frames the two characters. There are multiple scenes in which the characters are presented in reflections or in mirrors. Interestingly, when the female character is shown, most of the time there’s a crack in the mirror that fractures her face into two pieces. It almost feels similar to the way Reese is editing the film in a way and makes sense in context to the dominance theme.

Throughout the movie the speeding drug using teens clean and clean this apartment and the apartment almost never seems to be getting any less dirty. And there are random moments throughout where this girl begins to yell at her boyfriend and you can tell he is very bothered by it. But she’ll kiss him and then he’ll feel hypnotized by her. The moment of arguing is completely forgotten about as they begin to obsessively clean some more and the jarring editing between such moments really helps design that mentality the film has. There’s a pattern in how they clean, argue, makeout, snort drugs, clean some more, argue again, makeout and be happy again, snort some more drugs. And the way Reese edits these scenes together is almost unbearable and the way the two lead actors play their parts so realistically only makes it all harder to watch. There’s a documentary feel to all of this and that comes with the way its made.

Watch how many times paintings on the walls of the house mirror the shots Reese is framing. How many times reflections are taken into account. How many times cards are shown. How dust is framed in a shot. I think about one shot where the boy is cleaning near the ceiling and we can see dust covering the fan in the bathroom. Throughout the film fans are heard blaring in the background and seem to represent the high of the characters. Whenever the sounds of the fans start to go away and the fans stop blowing they snort more drugs and the sounds once again come back loudly. So it makes sense that the fans kind of stand as metaphors for their drug state so when we see dust in a fan hovering above the boy’s head we kind of understand what the dust everywhere else in the apartment means too. And when the girl stands on the toilet and cleans out the dust from the fan and in a later scene draws and stabs a heart on a cardboard box for a fan it’s obvious what the fans represent. A pretty huge metaphor in the movie and it all connects to the editing and framing of shots. Pay attention to the fans and how they visually appear and how there sounds play in effect.

The editing in the movie is fast and abrupt and quick but there are a few moments where Reese doesn’t cut away for extensive periods of time. The first scene like this is a scene where the boy sings a terrible song to the girl for her entertainment. It’s one of the ‘happy’ moments in the movie but still very depressing but a bit beautiful because of that. The next one is longer and lasts nearly three minutes where the two sit at the kitchen table and play a card game. Fans are blaring and we cannot hear what they’re saying but we can feel through the body language what’s happening. She’s tearing him down and dominating him. Look how Reese framed the actors and then look at the painting above them on the wall. Reese’s quote here on MUBI couldn’t be closer to the truth. Body language is what he aims for and what these two say to one another doesn’t really mean beep He then does another jarring cut to the two in the bedroom as she kisses on him and once again makes him forget about it all. They clean again.

The next scene he does linger with is also nearly three minutes and it focuses on the two in the same room cleaning the living room while Pink Floyd blares on the television. They sweep and swipe and sweep and swipe and the scene never cuts but just lingers back and forth between the two and then looks down at the floor. A pile of dust sits there and it keeps collecting up more and more and Pink Floyd on the soundtrack says ‘we don’t need no thought control’ . Makes sense for the next scene to be the girl proposing the idea to the boy to kill his older brother for practically no reason. Instead of responding morally because murder is wrong, the boy instead says he doesn’t think they should do it because they’d get caught. But eventually he is convinced and they go into his bedroom while he is sleeping and stab him to death.

The music in the movie is very informative as well and the characters are both seen wearing clothing that advertises the kind of crappy rock bands that they listen to. Insane Clown Posse, for example, on the girl’s shirt labeling her a ‘psycho bitch’. Which also makes sense in context with the scene where the boy calls her a ‘bitch’ and then the next scene shows his older brother calling her a ‘psycho’. The girl is crazy. But the girl isn’t over the top or cartoonish because Denelle Kjellman gives a very excellent performance that is very disturbing. In fact both leads are freakishly great and help further the movie in many ways.

The last scene is the most brilliant as they shower and we can tell through their acting that the murder doesn’t bother her but really scars him. He no longer wants to lock lips with her after he spent the entire film being controlled by that spell. In the bedroom, he lays his head on her stomach and she softly asks him ‘do you want to fix us up some lines so we can clean our mess’ and then he looks directly into the camera. This is the second time the fourth wall has been broken in Cleaners. The first time was the girl character before she snorted one of her lines as she gives a very disturbing smile to the camera as if telling us that there’s nothing we can do to help or stop her and it is disturbing as hell to watch. Can you believe this actress is only 13?

Cleaners is very thought-provoking and very artistic and very hard to watch but when you watch it all the way through and pay attention to the things Reese does in it you can see how intentional and powerful the filmmaking is here. It all comes together and it is all jarring and fucks with the head of the viewer and its some really hardcore stuff that can even be considered socially relevant with some thought. Reese made this movie with absolutely no money and if its possible for him to do this film with that much raw power with that little I cannot wait to see what he could do with some cash in his pocket. Cleaners hit me harder than most movies in 2011 did and that says something since my favorite that year was a Terrence Malick masterpiece.

Shamelessly advertising for Reese I couldn’t care less since I think more should see this!

Holy crap. You have no idea how much this review means to me. Whoever you are, and I seriously have no idea, thank you so much. It flatters me to no end that you picked up on some of the abstract details – especially the glass/reflection motif – and the fact that you placed this film of mine in the same sentence as Tree of Life, while totally unwarranted in my humble opinion, definitely brought a tear of happy to my eye. Thank you so, so much and super grateful it gave you this kind of response.

A great review..

Douglas and I discussed Cleaners extensively on PM.
It definitely requires repeat viewings, not so much to move beyond the production values but because of the complexity of the action and mise en scene. Even after a single viewing, one gets the feeling there is a there, there.

Even after a single viewing, one gets the feeling there is a there, there.

This makes me so happy, too. Thanks Rob. :)

Yeah, Robert. I’m very shocked that David caught onto a lot of what we discussed in the film. Especially considering many of the more negative responses to the film felt it was empty. Thanks so much to you all! Really inspires me to up my game and try to deliver more!

@ Mario

When you gonna watch this and tell me what you think, buddy?! Haha.

I haven’t heard of you Douglas, but after this thread I took a quick peek at SNAKE in the Garage. I’m struck by the scene where he’s talking on the phone and you hold on the spinning fan, and also by the framing of the shot where he is entering the room in the hallway (you have his top half cut off). Also interesting breaks in the sound.

I’m eventually going to sit down and watch it proper but just from what I glimpsed I have to say I immediately “get” your aesthetic and it shares a lot with the aesthetic I’m working on. I also like that everything is lo-fi. I can’t imagine anyone on imdb or most people in general would like these kinds of films, so you should take any overwhelming negativity with a grain of salt.

I’ll save my final thoughts for when I actually view it, but I already have to give you enormous credit for shooting something a bit different looking.

Thanks for the comments on Snake, John. Would definitely love to hear more back from you on it or any of the other films I’ve done (many of which are on Youtube, including Cleaners which I would definitely love to hear thoughts on). Thanks so much for taking the time to comment.

While I’m not allowed to make profit off Cleaners (and I really don’t mind), I would like to announce that I’m currently in the middle of putting together a DVD of the film (in the HD it was shot in, which is about 300x better than the quality seen on Youtube) with special features intact (including interviews with the two leads and director’s commentary). It will be a freebie to whosoever private messages me with their address wanting a copy. :) Thanks.

I recently viewed Cleaners on YouTube and liked its structure, its aesthetic.

Douglas and I discussed Cleaners extensively on PM. It definitely requires repeat viewings, not so much to move beyond the production values but because of the complexity of the action and mise en scene.

I’d be interested if you guys could share any illuminating insights from that discussion… but the OP review got me interested in watching this film in the first place, so thanks.

For those interested (or not) in the DVD, here are some samples of the quality difference between the Youtube upload and the disc that’s currently being put together. Original colors are back, the grain is more apparent, and the aspect ratio is no longer distorted.

@ Flani
Thanks for watching! And glad you liked it!

Concerning what Robert and I discussed, it was basically the framing of the shots and the choices in editing. Oddly, this review from the OP caught onto a few of the instances but, also, missed quite a lot. I can look in my PM history and share our discussion with you, as long as Robert gives consent for this to be done.

The difference in the image quality is astonishing. It doesn’t look like it was shot on VHS now!

The original poster was upfront about it, so it wouldn’t be fair if I didn’t mention that Mr. Reese and myself are good friends and have been for years, but bias aside, this is a pretty slick DVD transfer, particularly when compared to the horrendous image quality of the YouTube upload. Well done, Dougie!

Thanks Matt. I can’t remember exactly everything you thought about the film, but the comments on the quality is something I agree with. I’ve always hated sharing the film in the quality it was in on YouTube.

I don’t have my review anymore, but I remember giving it a B-. It’s possible that seeing the film the way it was intended to be seen will cause my score to rise.

Extremely flattered by a recent review post on Cleaners by MUBI’s own Flani…

Cleaners by Douglas Reese is a lesson to all aspiring filmmakers that creative problem solving and a feel for aesthetic form can successfully overcome financial constraints.

What is common amongst humanity is our propensity to create order out of chaos, and artists, in my humble opinion, are primarily concerned with creating and balancing aesthetic form symbolic of human feeling. Reese has balanced the form of Cleaners admirably, with a hierarchy of formal elements unifying the film’s style and content to create something which feels meaningful. Editing, sound and framing techniques are structured to poetically symbolise inner feelings throughout the direction of a simple plot; Cleaners is meaningful to me because I can feel the psychological depth of the characters as I follow them through their personal story from start to finish.

Cleaners unfortunately won’t appeal to those seeking a film with professional cinematography and sound, and to be sure, with a bigger budget, Reese perhaps could have made the same film with the same structures, framing, sound design and editing only with a more “polished” picture and sound. However, Reese’s feel for aesthetic form in Cleaners is genuinely impressive.

No problems, Douglas. It’s probably the most impressive “no budget” film I’ve seen thus far, and though it has its flaws its clear you put a lot of thought and effort into putting it all together. The most important thing to me was how the mise en scène enabled me to genuinely feel the psychological depth of the characters, which is why the film resonated with me on some level. Looking forward to seeing the DVD too.

Examples of mise en scène that resonated with you, Flani? :)

Ah, the mirror scenes were amongst my favourites, but also the choreography of the guy and girl in creating power dynamics, and the jarring editing has a kind of disturbing effect on how one immerses oneself into the world of these fractured characters, which is something you don’t see done too well very often. When I receive the DVD I’ll take some screenshots to show what I mean (unless you want me to use the YouTube version?)

At first I was a bit put off by the lack of audible dialogue, but after a while I realised that the dialogue probably wasn’t too important to comprehend compared with the visual elements. Question: what kind of work did you put into the sound mixing? I get the impression of course that you wanted it to be grating for psychological purposes, but I must admit I was more focused on the visual composition in general.

Snapshots from Youtube would be passable for discussion, I believe. If you share them, I’ll upload a higher quality image alongside yours so that they are in their original quality for observation.

When it comes to the sound design of Cleaners, it really came down to my limitations. I mean, I had no access to external sound design so naturally everything had to be recorded on the camera alongside the video footage. From shorts and features I had done previously, this was something that really degraded the quality of what I tried to accomplish. Cleaners was basically built off of that limitation, and I wanted to utilize that flaw into becoming one with the story itself – having relevance and a point with the material. Cue my design consisting of blaring fans and mainstream American metal/alternative rock music. (Though, the use of Pink Floyd had higher meaning to me, personally.)

I’m currently piecing a commentary together for the film. It will go much more in-depth on the visual/aural design of the film.

But yeah, Flani, it would be great knowing how someone else read and analyzed the film’s visuals. Never had that kind of response or reply concerning it before. I’m totally game. Haha. :P

Cleaners DVD will also include some shorts as bonus material. Alongside the cast interviews and the director commentary. Just so you guys know what’s going on with this disc. ;)

I was approached to write an essay for the DVD insert by the director of this feature. How could I say know?

Douglas: Cleaners was basically built off of that limitation, and I wanted to utilize that flaw into becoming one with the story itself – having relevance and a point with the material.

Creative problem solving!

So anyway, here are some stills from Cleaners and my thoughts on them, though I must stress that this is not meant to be overly authoritive; I’m just pointing out some of the things I liked about the mise en scène.

So the first shot of the film is actually taken from a scene near the end of the film, but at this stage of the proceedings all we know is that we have a girl leaning over a guy in bed and she’s whispering to him something about killing someone named Douglas; this is a foreshadowing of her dominance over him.

After the opening shot, the film begins with a series of shots of the guy and girl cleaning their house.

There are some “claustrophobic” framing shots of the guy and girl structured within a narrow space which serve to create a “closed in” mood for the film and how we feel about the psychology of its characters, and these shots gain in complexity, depth and contextual meaning as the film progresses and we learn more about the characters.

During these early cleaning scenes we also notice the jarring editing, which seems to set up and foreshadow a mood of the fractured and impulsive psychological nature of these characters within which we can immerse ourselves.

This “swaying” shot briefly blacks out the guy as it moves from one side of the bathroom to the other, and it seems pretty simple at this stage of the proceedings. But on second viewing of the film I get the feeling that it subtly foreshadows the inassertive and subservient nature of the guy’s character in that he “falls back into the shadows”, though I could be reading too much into this.

Another “claustrophobic” frame I like, structuring the background and foreground to “close in” around the guy as he is cleaning.

This scene has the girl chastisising the guy about his cleaning or something, but what I notice is the body language of the characters. The girl, though much shorter in the frame than the guy, is standing upright and looking him confidently in the face whilst speaking authoritively; whilst the guy is kind of slouching over and looking more at the mop as he half-heartedly tries to put more cloth on it. This kind of visual information is subtle but it feeds my brain and causes me to feel a certain way about the character dynamics.

Then we see the guy move out of the frame, only to move back in to kiss the girl as though drawn magnetically to her power. This is perhaps the first instance we genuinely feel and understand the sway that this girl has over the guy.

Interesting framing with a mirror. In these mirror scenes, one can’t help but feel to be a more ghostly outside observer of the characters rather than a more direct observer, which serves to distance the characters’ psyches from normality, giving them more depth. This is something we repeatedly see over the course of the film, and it actually gets more psychologically intense each time.

Again, fracturing the image with a mirror, evoking their fractured psychological make up as they prepare their drugs…

… and snort their drugs.

So in this shot we see a creative staging of both characters doing different things; he is cleaning whilst she is looking at herself at the mirror.

… and she just stands there watching him work. Her body language seems assertive in the way that she does this, and I’ll compare this scene with a similar scene later on in the film where the roles are reversed for differing effects.

So this “swaying” shot is an interesting piece of framing because it seems to subtly suggest a kind of split or fractured psychological nature in the girl; left and right hemisphere.

… and we feel more distance as she cleans, with the mirror splitting her head in half.

This scene is also interesting because even though the guy has the more dominant position in the frame in the upper right hand side and thus he has the opportunity to assert his dominance, he actually slouches over and looks kind of forlorn and disinterested whilst the girl has the more assertive posture and so I feel again that she has the power in the relationship.

Once again we get the girl in a dominant position over the guy, in the bottom left hand corner, again with the background of the frame being structured, this time with green and brown walls and the blue curtain.

The guy entertains the girl with a kind of shy and self-conscious performance of karaoke…

… and she takes the initiative yet again.

We finally get a sense of the guy asserting himself to some extent here in this scene, in that the guy and girl are both positioned in the mid-right hand side of the frame and he is facing to the right, creating a sense of his “moving” to the right and thus “dominating” her to some extent.

So when a new guy we haven’t seen before comes into this scene (whom we later learn is their roommate and the guy’s brother), we have the guy and girl laying on the ground as he stands over them, creating a feeling of them being downcast or outcast in their own little world, and perhaps even slightly pathetic to some extent.

He even asks them: “You guys high?” To which the guy responds: “No.”

We have the girl giving the guy assertive eye contact and body language, but not him with her; he’s looking down instead.

… and when he does look up at her, it feels as though she’s burning him through with her intense gaze.

She also refuses his request for the cigarette she’s smoking, still staring him down, further asserting her dominance over him.

Another mirror shot splitting the girl’s head in two, this time after she has violently attacked a box with a knife. Here she seems to be attempting to control her rage.

Some more interesting framing in the mirror, which further distances the girl’s psyche from normality as she meditates with a knife.

After the roommate calls the girl a “fucking psycho”, we see her standing straight and assertively behind the guy, facing his back, smoking her cigarette calmly yet aggressively, whilst the guy yet again has a slouched posture as he’s cleaning. The body language of the two characters in this scene speaks volumes, giving it a creepy vibe as though you can sense she’s about to do something crazy.

So when we have the guy standing and watching the girl clean, it doesn’t create the same feeling of dominance as it does when she stands watches him clean earlier in the film. The guy seems like he wants the girl’s attention but is unsure of himself, looking down at the ground, whilst the girl seems aware of his presence in wanting her attention and yet seemingly chooses to ignore him.

He paces the room, looking at her as she continues to sweep the floor…

… and eventually he decides to start cleaning too.

The girl leans assertively over the guy and fondles him as she tries to convince him to kill his brother and roommate Douglas (the scene from the beginning of the film)…

… and we see them prepare for the murder in the mirror, splitting the girl’s head in two, again distancing us from them as they become increasingly delusional and psychotic.

As the girl puts on more clothing and appears to be confident, the guy is standing over her apprehensively, and sure enough he asks her: “You sure you wanna do this?”

Interspersed with the violent murder we see and hear silent, static shots of the empty house, suggesting social and psychological isolation and distance.

The guy is avoiding the girl’s advances in the shower…

.. and we end with shots of the guy, now seemingly fragile and helpless, clinging onto the girl in bed as she basks in her utter domination and control over him.

Thanks for this overview/commentary Flani! And happy to see you pick up on so much concerning the cinematography and editing. I was very particular on how I wanted things staged and to feel.

So when we have the guy standing and watching the girl clean, it doesn’t create the same feeling of dominance as it does when she stands watches him clean earlier in the film. The guy seems like he wants the girl’s attention but is unsure of himself, looking down at the ground, whilst the girl seems aware of his presence in wanting her attention and yet seemingly chooses to ignore him. He paces the room, looking at her as she continues to sweep the floor… and eventually he decides to start cleaning too.

And this is what my film is really about in a nutshell. Happy you noticed this moment and very happy you realized what subtly Hall was doing in his performance there. As soon as he bends over with that dustpan and starts scraping across the floor to the beat of the song playing, I wanted to demonstrate the irony in “not needing any education”. Thanks so much, Flani! :)

Say hello to the possible DVD cover for CLEANERS…!! :D

Pretty sick, my friend.

Why, thank you. :)

Here’s Flani’s notes with images that are from the DVD. Much better, yes? :)

Douglas: Cleaners was basically built off of that limitation, and I wanted to utilize that flaw into becoming one with the story itself – having relevance and a point with the material.

Creative problem solving!

So anyway, here are some stills from Cleaners and my thoughts on them, though I must stress that this is not meant to be overly authoritive; I’m just pointing out some of the things I liked about the mise en scène.

So the first shot of the film is actually taken from a scene near the end of the film, but at this stage of the proceedings all we know is that we have a girl leaning over a guy in bed and she’s whispering to him something about killing someone named Douglas; this is a foreshadowing of her dominance over him.

After the opening shot, the film begins with a series of shots of the guy and girl cleaning their house.
There are some “claustrophobic” framing shots of the guy and girl structured within a narrow space which serve to create a “closed in” mood for the film and how we feel about the psychology of its characters, and these shots gain in complexity, depth and contextual meaning as the film progresses and we learn more about the characters.

During these early cleaning scenes we also notice the jarring editing, which seems to set up and foreshadow a mood of the fractured and impulsive psychological nature of these characters within which we can immerse ourselves.

This “swaying” shot briefly blacks out the guy as it moves from one side of the bathroom to the other, and it seems pretty simple at this stage of the proceedings. But on second viewing of the film I get the feeling that it subtly foreshadows the inassertive and subservient nature of the guy’s character in that he “falls back into the shadows”, though I could be reading too much into this.

Another “claustrophobic” frame I like, structuring the background and foreground to “close in” around the guy as he is cleaning.

This scene has the girl chastisising the guy about his cleaning or something, but what I notice is the body language of the characters. The girl, though much shorter in the frame than the guy, is standing upright and looking him confidently in the face whilst speaking authoritively; whilst the guy is kind of slouching over and looking more at the mop as he half-heartedly tries to put more cloth on it. This kind of visual information is subtle but it feeds my brain and causes me to feel a certain way about the character dynamics.

Then we see the guy move out of the frame, only to move back in to kiss the girl as though drawn magnetically to her power. This is perhaps the first instance we genuinely feel and understand the sway that this girl has over the guy.

Interesting framing with a mirror. In these mirror scenes, one can’t help but feel to be a more ghostly outside observer of the characters rather than a more direct observer, which serves to distance the characters’ psyches from normality, giving them more depth. This is something we repeatedly see over the course of the film, and it actually gets more psychologically intense each time.

Again, fracturing the image with a mirror, evoking their fractured psychological make up as they prepare their drugs…

… and snort their drugs.

So in this shot we see a creative staging of both characters doing different things; he is cleaning whilst she is looking at herself at the mirror.

… and she just stands there watching him work. Her body language seems assertive in the way that she does this, and I’ll compare this scene with a similar scene later on in the film where the roles are reversed for differing effects.

So this “swaying” shot is an interesting piece of framing because it seems to subtly suggest a kind of split or fractured psychological nature in the girl; left and right hemisphere.

… and we feel more distance as she cleans, with the mirror splitting her head in half.

This scene is also interesting because even though the guy has the more dominant position in the frame in the upper right hand side and thus he has the opportunity to assert his dominance, he actually slouches over and looks kind of forlorn and disinterested whilst the girl has the more assertive posture and so I feel again that she has the power in the relationship.

Once again we get the girl in a dominant position over the guy, in the bottom left hand corner, again with the background of the frame being structured, this time with green and brown walls and the blue curtain.

The guy entertains the girl with a kind of shy and self-conscious performance of karaoke…

… and she takes the initiative yet again.

We finally get a sense of the guy asserting himself to some extent here in this scene, in that the guy and girl are both positioned in the mid-right hand side of the frame and he is facing to the right, creating a sense of his “moving” to the right and thus “dominating” her to some extent.

So when a new guy we haven’t seen before comes into this scene (whom we later learn is their roommate and the guy’s brother), we have the guy and girl laying on the ground as he stands over them, creating a feeling of them being downcast or outcast in their own little world, and perhaps even slightly pathetic to some extent.

He even asks them: “You guys high?” To which the guy responds: “No.”

We have the girl giving the guy assertive eye contact and body language, but not him with her; he’s looking down instead.

… and when he does look up at her, it feels as though she’s burning him through with her intense gaze.

She also refuses his request for the cigarette she’s smoking, still staring him down, further asserting her dominance over him.

Another mirror shot splitting the girl’s head in two, this time after she has violently attacked a box with a knife. Here she seems to be attempting to control her rage.

Some more interesting framing in the mirror, which further distances the girl’s psyche from normality as she meditates with a knife.

After the roommate calls the girl a “fucking psycho”, we see her standing straight and assertively behind the guy, facing his back, smoking her cigarette calmly yet aggressively, whilst the guy yet again has a slouched posture as he’s cleaning. The body language of the two characters in this scene speaks volumes, giving it a creepy vibe as though you can sense she’s about to do something crazy.

So when we have the guy standing and watching the girl clean, it doesn’t create the same feeling of dominance as it does when she stands watches him clean earlier in the film. The guy seems like he wants the girl’s attention but is unsure of himself, looking down at the ground, whilst the girl seems aware of his presence in wanting her attention and yet seemingly chooses to ignore him.

He paces the room, looking at her as she continues to sweep the floor…

… and eventually he decides to start cleaning too.

The girl leans assertively over the guy and fondles him as she tries to convince him to kill his brother and roommate Douglas (the scene from the beginning of the film)…

… and we see them prepare for the murder in the mirror, splitting the girl’s head in two, again distancing us from them as they become increasingly delusional and psychotic.

As the girl puts on more clothing and appears to be confident, the guy is standing over her apprehensively, and sure enough he asks her: “You sure you wanna do this?”

Interspersed with the violent murder we see and hear silent, static shots of the empty house, suggesting social and psychological isolation and distance.

The guy is avoiding the girl’s advances in the shower…

.. and we end with shots of the guy, now seemingly fragile and helpless, clinging onto the girl in bed as she basks in her utter domination and control over him.

I just got in contact with the Criterion Collection with a proposal of releasing Cleaners through their label if the music rights were cleared for it. Waiting for a response.

(Yes, I know I’m crazy. But what the hell. I’ve had many fans suggest me try this out, so I did. Accomplished.)

That’s how you get things done. You try.

—DiB