Sun Choke | Review

Choke Up the Sun: Cresciman’s Dubious Deliberation on the Female Psyche

Mentally unstable women with fragile personalities formulate a vibrant subgenre of their own across various psychological dramas and horror films, as keenly utilized a staple as ever in low-fi American indie cinema. But a strong character portrait conveying extreme emotional and psychological distress is difficult to maintain at the expense of the narrative, especially when frugal budgets further enhance the dependence on ambiguity. Somewhere between the lower (Sophia Takal’s Green, 2011 or Mickey Keating’s Darling, 2015) and higher end (Alex Ross Perry’s Queen of Earth, 2015) of recent American offerings on a woman undone is Ben Cresciman’s aggravatingly cloy Sun Choke, where a brooding brunette wastes away under the care of a sinister warden beneath the sun kissed privilege of the Hollywood Hills. The incredibly spare narrative begs to be compared to a handful of other famed titles where troubled women usurp the identities of others in their immediate vicinity, but the film’s continual elusiveness hobbles its effectiveness and creates a general air of indifference regarding subtle, esoteric metaphors.

In a palatial home in the isolated Hollywood Hills, Irma (Barbara Crampton) painstakingly cares for Janie (Sarah Hagen), a troubled young woman who appears to have gone through some kind of recent trauma. Charged with looking after the young woman by her absent father, Irma administers holistic remedies to Janie, and it seems she’s finely been rehabilitated enough to be allowed to leave the premises for short periods of time. Almost immediately, Janie begins to obsessively follow Savannah (Sara Malakul Lane) because she sees herself reflected in the woman’s car window when she drives by. Soon, it seems Janie believes she is inextricably connected to Savannah, and Irma begins to notice she’s perhaps not well enough to continue with outside excursions. But Janie disagrees.

It’s great to see cult star Barbara Crampton and her bangs continue their resurgence in offbeat American genre titles (We Are Still Here; Road Games; Little Sister being a few other recent offerings), here another strange lady with questionable intentions. Babbling a bunch of holistic nonsense to her troubled ward, her hinting at Janie’s troubled familial legacy primes the film with the proper amount of anxiety.

Although Crampton delivers a few stellar moments (tackling Janie and administering a dog collar, for one), the trenchant obtuseness instead robs her of any flavor. Sarah Hagen (who headlined Clay Jeter’s Jess+Moss, 2011) has the right look of a hysteric in the making, a troubled soul with the pouty hint of an Isabelle Adjani or a Michael Pitt. Since Cresciman doesn’t bother to explain why exactly Janie is obsessed with Sara Lane’s Savannah beyond the coincidence of a psychotic induced reflection, or what she did to deserve Irma’s Victorian era coddling, all the eventual gobbledygook about breach births and a return to what appears to be an amniotic state (hinted at with early bits of overly determined dialogue, when Janie is advised to be the pool of water and not the reflection bouncing off) is robbed of effective intensity.

Of passing interest, Sun Choke would seem to have the requisite elements of intrigue, especially considering DP Matthew Rudenberg’s visuals, drifting between ambient dream-like moments and sexually explicit exchanges underlined with dread before the eventual violence.

★★/☆☆☆☆☆