Critics reviews

Krisha nearly moved this viewer—to make an early retreat from the theater, but I stuck it out, aghast at its accrual of insultingly unlikely narrative contrivances and absurd stylistic tics. Was some of this shot on a consumer drone? Perhaps the only thing that _does_ surprise about Krisha, an unevenly blended mixture of Malick-humping, awe-aspiring camera moves and tiring, po-faced long-take imitations of raw Cassavetes-ian _rill life_, is the pass it got.

As a wreck of a needy alcoholic trying to re-connect with her family over Thanksgiving, Krisha Fairchild goes all-out Gena Rowlands and makes her swaggeringly unsympathetic character somehow glamorous and magnetic while also allowing very deadpan humor to grow out of the heavy-duty and upsetting confrontation scenes. What's to be done with the Krishas of this world?

Gradually, it becomes clear that writer-director Trey Edward Shults (who also plays the protagonist's estranged son) can't develop the drama beyond that first engrossing encounter with family tension; the final stretch is something of a shambles, and Shults' use of music and changing aspect ratios only contributes to the sense of randomization.

This nifty debut feature is by no means the fully-formed package, and it would be tough to call it satisfying in a superficial sense, but it presents a director with an amazing amount of natural talent and a willingness to drag a story in strange and surprising directions. He combines the intense, meandering naturalism of American indie godhead John Cassavetes with some light experimentation.

A confessional narrative that expresses the emotional contours of addiction nwithout explicating them, Krisha is as perfect as a debut feature could hope to be – most of its flaws turn out to be strengths. Wearing all the hallmarks of an American micro-budget indie on its sleeve... Shults's film transcends the potential clichés each of these elements contains and makes something accessible and personal.

Making his debut as a feature filmmaker after working for years under the tutelage of Terrence Malick, Shults can't quite help himself from over-directing every moment. He's seemingly lived this subject matter, even casting himself as Krisha's long tormented son. But being this close to the material has swayed his film into the realm of misery porn.

A big old family might gather under a single roof in Krisha, but the intriguing indie nonetheless steers clear of home-for-the-holidays formula—it's more emotional-spiral suspense film than sentimental drama... The film puts a knot in your stomach—the character study triggers all the dread of a haunted-house visit.

Watching "Krisha" is a revelation: there are expected "rules" for such material (a former addict returns home for a holiday), but then director/writer Trey Edward Shults breaks every rule, making those rules seem tired and arbitrary in the process, and he does so with bravura, confidence, flash. While the style is in-your-face, every element of it is in service to the story, and to the story beneath the story, how destroyed this family has been by Krisha's addiction.

Fairchild's performance is key to the movie: Krisha is witty and chatty one moment, and shut down like a deserted fairground the next. We see dazzling warmth in her eyes, but also the terror of total system failure... If Shults didn't look far to find some of his actors, he found the right one in Krisha Fairchild.

The big secret that comes between Krisha and Trey fans way back into family history, and it is told with intelligent compassion. If Shults has written his family's story from the point of view of the member who ostensibly has wrought the most damage, he tells it with a canny double vision that juggles the harm she's done with the trouble she's in. Krisha may be the in-house monster, but she's the kind of monster that's made, not born.

Few movies bore into a character's head as deeply as "Krisha," and with such uncompromising ferocity. A family drama in alternately appalling and queasily hilarious extremis, this bravura first feature takes place over an epically terrible Thanksgiving that may inspire you to start leafing through the collected poems of Philip Larkin, looking for that one about Mum and Dad. It takes some time to grasp who wronged whom here, but it's clear from the get go that serious damage has been done.

There is a visual catalogue of everything that can be found inside a dead turkey, a Kubrickian vision of an oven's interior, and Brian McOmber's superb score, alternating between lyricism and musique concrète. Shults infuses his orchestra of domestic hubbub with alien energies. Everything is at once familiar and unnerving. We watch Krisha waiting for something to go wrong, even before we intuit a specific cause.