FILM REVIEW: Goodbye Party

Entrance
Directed by Dallas Richard Hallam and Patrick Horvath

By Alexander C. Kafka

Mumblecore meets mayhem in the terrifying, clever new indie horror film Entrance, directed by Dallas Richard Hallam and Patrick Horvath.

Shot mostly in a producer’s house, this shoestring project is an odd hybrid of character study and slasher pic. Throw sleepless nights from Cassavetes, Polanski, De Palma, and Dario Argento into a blender, add a strained cup of Tobe Hooper bloodlust, and press Grind.

Suziey Block in "Entrance"

As character study alone, Entrance would be notable for its naturalistic feel and subtle, poignant acting, particularly by lead Suziey Block. And as slasher film—though I confess to being more ambivalent, upchucky bystander than devoted connoisseur of the genre—Entrance holds its own in the shock and effects categories. (Makeup artists Chelsie Hite, Michelle Michalak, and Angel Wen, thanks for helping me lose a pound by putting me off dinner tonight.) But the film’s real canniness is in combining the two, lulling us with its languid, borderline snoozy, this-is-happening routines before walloping us with matter-of-fact this-can’t-be-happening terrors.

Though perhaps destined for a late-night VOD and Netflix-streaming niche audience, Entrance is a worthwhile ride beyond that and whispers more visible promise ahead for its principals. Block, particularly, who has been largely consigned so far to horror ingénue roles, demonstrates a quirky, graceful presence that could contribute mightily to more mainstream dramatic fare.

She plays Suzy, a disenchanted, isolated twentysomething in LA, with a dead car and a dead-end job in a coffee house. She has friends, but as she hangs with them in hipster bars, she looks bored, like she’s going through the motions. Ditto with sex, if the gloomy one-night stand we witness is any indication. Suzy’s not in a rut; she is a rut—less a human being than a melancholy spreadsheet of chores and disappointments, relieved only by glasses of wine and care for her dog. Like some estranged, morose half-sister of Zooey Deschanel, Suzy has straight, jet-black locks, and disenchanted, hopeful almond eyes beseeching from a passive pale face. She needs a hug, and not the kind the guys in the bars want to give her either.

When her dog disappears, Suzy crumbles, curling up on the couch with snapshots from better times. Weirded out by strange house noises, some men harassing her on the street, a car that may or may not be tailing her, she tells her housemate Karen she’s going to move out. Karen arranges a goodbye party for her. And if Suzy—now dolled up in a dashing green dress, with a little extra attention to her makeup—has felt unloved in the City of Angst-Ridden Angels, one of the guests proves otherwise, that there is indeed someone who would do anything to have a quiet moment alone with her.

Entrance is a little clumsy at times—the tailing car and a strobe-flashing midnight lurker undermine the more effectively subtle intimations of perhaps warranted paranoia. And Hallam and Horvath would have done better to drop, literally, the predator’s mask, which works better as the dresser-adorning doppelganger for Suzy’s disturbingly affectless stare. No doubt too the film’s slow burn will try some viewers’ patience, though it’s as much a part of the movie’s mechanism as a slingshot’s gradual pullback.
Overall, though, with its violence as truthful and unhyped as its characterizations, it will leave a nasty cut in your memory. And next time you’re at a casual get-together where post-collegiates play alt-rock on vinyl and chat and frolic like it’s all good, consider the possibility that some of it isn’t.