Critics reviews

[Happer's Comet] is less an experimental film than it is an experiential one – constantly invoking feeling through its combination of image and sound... Yes, it’s difficult to know where to begin with Happer’s Comet, but not because the experience is especially frustrating in any tangible way.

Happer’s Comet captures the isolation of the pandemic, but also the quiet melancholy of the suburbs, the everyday banality of middle-class America, that of walking through quiet neighborhoods late at night, after a light rain, feeling like an intruder just for being there, on those streets without sidewalks.

There’s little in the way of a plot here, which makes getting on the film’s wavelength easy and good fun... The best of the film finds the camera prowling through corn fields or dark streets searching less for meaning than the shape of its absence... Why is it odd for a movie to have no dialogue, no particular direction, but rather a vague yearning for something asymmetrical?

Taormina has taken the problem of having to look at the same thing every day and turned it into an aesthetic... Sometimes wearying, sometimes pointlessly cryptic, “Happer’s Comet” nevertheless has a distinct way of viewing the world.

Taormina’s unique sensibility makes the film, more than anything, a cinematic tone poem, expressing a reconciliation with sleeplessness as time yawns into strange infinitudes.

Capturing a series of suburban spots that feel universally recognisable, [Happer's Comet is] not exactly melancholic, not quite serene, not entirely mysterious. Taormina is one to watch, a reminder that one’s circumstances and perceived limitations can always be redirected with thoughtful, electric purpose.

Taormina's nocturnal kaleidoscope of a sleepless suburban community creates an impressionistic non-narrative cinema... Engaging in dialogue-free observation, Taormina fixates on seemingly banal and insignificant gestures and movements that progressively acquire an alienating vibe of the unknown.

Films made during the pandemic typically share certain characteristics: small crews, minuscule casts and limited locations. Tyler Taormina’s sophomore feature Happer’s Comet contains all of these, yet feels like nothing we’ve seen before... [and] eloquently speaks to our recent collective loneliness.

Like a mysterious dream that begins to dissipate upon waking, Happer’s Comet feels like stumbling around and blindly reaching out in the dark, and the sweet waves of relief at finding someone still next to you. It’s a deeply beautiful piece of work.

[Happer's Comet] is both a bewitching ode to the night owl and, given its constraints, quietly energizing artistic expression... What’s remarkable about [the film] is what sense of unison Taormina achieves, the resulting cumulative mood that is created. Each setting, and almost each person, appear disparate and isolated... but they feel intrinsically connected, like a network of mycelium.