BLUE ROSE, THE
(director/writer: Lee Isaac Chung; screenwriter: Mark L. Smith, story by Joseph Kosinski; cinematographer: Dan Mindel; editor: Terilyn A. Shropshire; music: Benjamin Wallfisch; cast: Daisy Edgar-Jones (Kate Cooper), Glenn Powell (Tyler Owens), Anthony Ramos (Javi), Brandon Perea (Boone), Maura Tierney (Cathy), Sasha Lane (Lily), Harry Hadden-Paton (Ben), David Corenswet (Scott), Daryl McCormack (Jeb), Tunde Adebimpe (Dexter), Katy O’Brien (Dani), Nik Dodani (Praveen); Runtime: 122; MPAA Rating: PG-13; producers: Frank Marshall, Patrick Crowley; A Universal Pictures release of Warner Bros.; 2024)
“It’s Lynchian-like weird.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
George Baron is the first time feature film director and writer of this style over substance thriller that is artfully presented, but is not for all tastes (it’s Lynchian-like weird). The 18-year-old Baron uses the mystery of the blue flower, a source of inspiration in religion, dreams and literature throughout the ages, to foster his fanciful murder story. He offers an alt reality story that submerges the normality of daily life.
Baron goes 1950s retro to set the scene for it to unfold as a loopy film noir story.
Two ambitious rookie LAPD detectives, in the Los Angeles suburbs, Detective Dalton (George Baron) and Detective Lilly (Olivia Scott Welch), on their first big case, investigate the stabbing death of the wife abuser Harry O’Malley (Manny Liotta) by his artist wife Sophie (Nikko Austen Smith). After the bloody stabbing, she flees to the house of her manipulative weirdo sister Norma (Danielle Bisutti), where there are socialite’s partying as if in a stupor. The viewer already saw Sophie do the crime, so this is not a whodunit film.
In the front of Norma’s house there’s a garden where all the white flowers have been painted blue. There’s also painted on the house a symbolic blue triangle (at one time used to label emigrants and foreign forced laborers). And there’s also a letter in the mailbox that clearly explains the killing scene, as written by the guilty party.
As the detectives get closer to apprehending the killer, strange things happen in their investigation that leads them to an LA nightclub, where Catherine Christianson (Glume Harlow) sings a siren song to the blindfolded patrons. The detectives are now operating in a dream world atmosphere that is bizarre and frightening.
Detective Lilly explains in the third act that “Not all art is meant to be understood, but simply appreciated.”
Blue Rose is mostly effective as an unconventional visionary film on Hollyweird. It delves into its narrative with the Lynchian Blue Velvet touch for dealing with mysteries, as it takes us down a nightmare-like scenario with only a few stumbles.
It played at the FrightFest Film Festival.
REVIEWED ON 7/11/2024 GRADE: B
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