The Sudbury Devil is when you mix Nicolas Winding Refn with Wes Anderson
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by Blender Dumbass
Aka: J.Y. Amihud. A Jewish by blood, multifaceted artist with experience in film-making, visual effects, programming, game development, music and more. A philosopher at heart. An activist for freedom and privacy. Anti-Paternalist. A user of Libre Software. Speaking at least 3 human languages. The writer and director of the 2023 film "Moria's Race" and the lead developer of it's game sequel "Dani's Race".
Andrew Rakich's self-distributed 2023 film The Sudbury Devil is quite a piece of cool horror film-making. Made for a mere $25 thousand, the film is surprisingly good. It is tense and intense. It is rather fucked up. And it is smartly written and directed. ↩ Reply
The only problem I might have with it, perhaps would be the acting. Not the actors themselves, but rather the directing of the actors. It feels like these are very capable, very good actors, but they were given direction, such that the whole thing feels a little bit overacted. Credit where credit is due, the whole film is consistently overacted. So it doesn't feel strange. It is kind of a part of the style. ↩ Reply
Speaking of style, the film ( probably due to budgetary constraints ) is very static. Almost the entire thing is shot on a tripod. And the fact that it is shot in the 4:3 aspect ratio, makes me think that the director tried to emulate something of a Wes Anderson style of film-making. This is probably why I feel the actors are over-acting. In Wes Anderson's films the actors are usually slightly under-acting everything, to give it this precise feel. ↩ Reply
But while the shot compositions and the aspect-ratio remind me of Wes Anderson, the tone of the film reminds me of something like Only God Forgives by Nicolas Winding Refn. There is no neon in this film. It is set in 1678 ( with some good recreation of the language of the time ). But the constant psycho-sexual tension and the constant psychedelic Lynchianism of everything very much reminds of work by Refn. ↩ Reply
Andrew Rakich himself plays a significant role in the film, adding this film onto the same list of films as Pulp Fiction, where the writer / director has a plot-effecting not-too-small of a role. Hell I've done that myself in I'm Not Even Human. ↩ Reply
One small note about Andrew Rakich. Apparently he himself published the film via torrent for those of us that cannot afford to buy a copy on his website. This is dope! This is a hacker mindset! More film-makers should be like Andrew Rakich. c:0 ↩ Reply
Thanks for @Troler for suggesting this film. ↩ Reply
Happy Hacking!!! ↩ Reply
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Troler
c:0 March 02, 2026 One small note about Andrew Rakich. Apparently he himself published the film via torrent for those of us that cannot afford to buy a copy on his website
⤴ ViewYes, that way the people who cannot afford the film, be able to watch, maybe even review it and thus make it more known ;)
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