Flytrapper

Screens 2pm Saturday, October 17 at Nightmares Film Festival.

by Hope Madden

Forty-five seconds into director Drew Britton’s Flytrapper and I was hooked. Co-writer/co-star Georgia Lee King cuts the most fascinating figure as Crystal, a psychopath who is defiantly, delightfully, dorkishly certain of herself.

Crystal’s days of marauding and cutting sick rap beats are interrupted by an unannounced visit from her BFF, Melonie (Leah Piescinski).

Britton’s approach is naturalistic. Nothing feels staged, takes linger, and a very lived-in relationship emerges between the two leads. But this is not your average scary movie. Flytrapper is like if Ken Loach made Napoleon Dynamite as a grisly, female led horror.

The humor is so natural and delightful that the sudden bursts of violence really startle. King’s performance is ferocious and funny with surprising depth and vulnerability. Piescinski’s quiet turn never steals the spotlight, but offers something authentic and tender. The pair’s chemistry and delivery are the secrets to the levity.

You never feel as if Flytrapper is mocking these two characters in the way that other films centered on social misfits sometimes do. King and Piescinski understand Crystal and Malonie so well that, while you can never predict where the story is leading, the surprises land as natural—albeit misguided—choices they would make.

The movie looks great, too. Set in a small, lakeside town with no air conditioning in a sweaty summer, Flytrapper immerses you in an environment that suits its tale. You feel dropped into a town where most shops are still cash only, where WIFI is hard to come by and the surveillance state is still miles and miles away.

It’s a gorgeous, low-fi environment where friendship, murder, and musical creativity flourish. But Britton does lean into absurdity now and again with gloriously weird dream sequences.

It’s an odd combination, but it works wonderfully to deliver a genuinely unique cinematic experience.