#140RVW
Fascinating as an achievement in guerrilla filmmaking and for absolutely no other reason. Stunned that this saw release, for many reasons…
What’s more:
You’ve possibly heard about this movie: fantasy/horror/mind trip movie filmed without permission at Walt Disney World & Disneyland. The concept is so startling that it earned a viewing from me, despite having no particular interest in the genre or story (such as exists).
It truly is remarkable what debut writer/director Randy Moore is able to accomplish here. The idea of pulling this off defies belief. How can you make a feature-length film in one of the most closely monitored and managed places in the world and have them not know you’re doing it?
Such is the state of digital filmmaking that they pulled it off. For starters, the cameras they used (two Canon EOS 5D Mark IIs & one Canon EOS 1D Mark IV) look just like consumer grade touristy cameras, if a slightly better class. Which is pretty much what they are – they are simply capable of shooting HD video. They shot in black & white to compensate for the lack of control they had over lighting and the environment. They were completely at the mercy of ambient light and sunlight. Simply incredible.
And as a technical accomplishment, it is extremely impressive. Far from detracting from the story, the lack of color hugely enhances the artistic vision. Sights that are usually vivid and beautiful gain an eerie, unfamiliar quality, which is of course exactly what they were going for. Escape From Tomorrow is a visual triumph borne out of the least likely to succeed production. This really shouldn’t have worked. But it does…
The other thing that makes my watching the movie so unlikely is that it ever saw the light of day. I simply cannot get over the fact that Disney didn’t try to kill this thing. I get that these sort of laws are hardly black and white, but I don’t accept the fact that they couldn’t have buried it. Even if you want to go with the fair use argument, I think you can certainly make a case that use of their trademarked characters and rides in this film is done so in a detrimental manner and is damaging. Even if you have a serious 1st Amendment supporter for a judge, it would be pretty hard to get past the fact that filming in this manner clearly violates the rules of the parks, and far more importantly that you have now violated the privacy of hundreds of people (including minors) who have signed no release for their likeness to appear in this movie.
I’m sure they looked long and hard at legal action, but in the end appear to have accepted some very wise counsel to just ignore the damn thing and not give it any more attention than it can garner on its own.
So, after you get past the novelty of the production, how much attention does it deserve on its own? Not much. I really kind of hated it as a movie. It was downright unpleasant to watch. The film seems to be a classic case of trying so hard to do something that you never stop to wonder if you should. The setting and the disbelief of how it was made are fascinating, but that’s the only thing that is.
The story itself is a joyless and confusing mess. After 90 minutes I still wasn’t really sure what genre the picture was or what the whole point was. I think I get what they were going for – a surreal thriller showing that strange things can happen anywhere, and are possibly more likely to occur in an unnaturally happy place. But, man, it takes a long time to get there and it’s hugely disjointed. There’s no flow to it, it’s boring, and the tone shifts radically scene to scene. I can only imagine that the unusual nature of the production significantly handcuffed their ability to get all the footage they needed and this is a case of not having enough good to edit into a cohesive story. But maybe not. Perhaps this was exactly what Moore was going for, in which case I’ll just chalk this up to me not being the right audience for this David Lynch-ian type thriller. (But honestly, it wasn’t thrilling. I don’t know how to classify it. It felt like horror, but it really wasn’t. It’s certainly creepy, but more in a Naked Lunch kind of way. But it wasn’t the creepiness that made it distasteful, it was the creeps. The people in this movie are all so awful to each other that you can barely stand to watch. I’m not concerned that there are supernatural and dark forces happening at Disney World; I’m concerned that there are total jerks behaving badly and upsetting children.)
This film raises all kinds of possibilities of how guerrilla filmmaking may become a serious force, legal/privacy issues, technical considerations and many other conversation starters. But a discussion about future of covert filming would have been more entertaining.
Poster:
Trailer:
Bechdel Test:
Fail
The Representation Test Score: D (2 pts)
(http://therepresentationproject.org/grading-hollywood-the-representation-test/)
| Main Cast | Roy Abramsohn Jim, Elena Schuber Emily, Katelynn Rodriguez Sara, Jack Dalton Elliot |
| Rating | Not Rated |
| Release Date | 2013 |
| Director | Randy Moore |
| Genres | Fantasy, Horror |
| Plot | In a world of fake castles and anthropomorphic rodents, an epic battle begins when an unemployed father’s sanity is challenged by a chance encounter with two underage girls on holiday. |
| Poster |  |
| Runtime | 90 |
| Tagline | Bad things happen everywhere. |
| Writers | Randy Moore |
| Year | 2013 |
