Kryptic
China | English
2023 | 96 Minutes
Director: Kourtney Roy
Cast: Chloe Pirrie, Jeff Gladstone, Jason Deline, Ali Rusu-Tahir
When I first read about Kryptic, seemingly a film about cryptozoology and the people that hunt them, trying to discover the truths behind the myths, I was intrigued. I thought this was going to be a film was right up my ally, almost tailor made for me. Silly, silly me.
Kryptic felt like the story was built around an idea, and that idea was to gross out the audience, which is all fine and dandy – but the story was so full of plot holes that the roads in and around Montreal were jealous.
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If there’s one thing I can’t excuse in any medium; it’s lazy storytelling. How do you write a storyboard, then a script, and not realize that none of it makes an inch of sense? Caution, now; there be spoilers ahead.
Clad in a pink windbreaker and hiking boots, Kay Hall joins a group of women on a nature hike to Krypto Peak. The area is known for cryptids and is also where renowned cryptozoologist Barbara Valentine went missing three years prior, while she searched for a mysterious creature. When Kay strays from the group and has a disturbingly viscous encounter with the beast, she forgets who she is and becomes obsessed with finding Barb Valentine, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Kay. Fleeing an intruder that night, she heads back to the forest, where she meets an array of strangers with, yes, cryptic messages as she searches for the missing scientist and the creature.
Leaving things open ended, or to the imagination can be an interesting tool for a writer but this film felt more like writers block, where the creatives behind it couldn’t decide what to do with certain aspects of the film and instead said fuck it, let people read into it. Our main character keeps waking up in strange places covered in mud. Why? Fuck knows. We see a bartender getting orally pleasured by some hussy, which then becomes a gooey slimefest. Why? Fuck knows.
The key component to the film is that the monster slimes people. Or something. Why? Fuck knows. What does this monster actually do to it’s victims? You guessed it. Fuck knows. Something about portals or, whatever. Eesh.
To be quite honest, Kryptic might have worked as a short film designed to present the team behind it and their ability to make gross stuff. That might have worked. However,
Furthermore, a large portion of the cast seemed to have been found lingering around an audition, unselected for other films. The best of the rest. Such bad acting outside the main actress and one or two of the characters she comes into contact with. This is like a bad after school special with a few cool, yet unexplained and barely shown gross scenes. At least show what the fuck is happening…
The end of this mess is so infuriatingly stupid, it’ll make you want to shove your face into a bandsaw.
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This ends up being akin to a filler episode from the X-Files or Outer Limits. The ones you skip over because nothing of merit happens. Fluff. The basic premise was there, but the execution was beyond flawed.
Give this one a miss.
