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[DVD Review] ‘Magic Magic’ is Ambiguous and Frustrating
Reviewed by Patrick Cooper
Come to south Chile, they said. We’ll have a great time, they said. Such was not the case for Alicia, a nervous young girl played by Juno Temple in Sebastian Silva’s psychological thriller Magic Magic. The film played Sundance this year along with Silva’s drug-quest comedy Crystal Fairy and both films feature Michael Cera breaking his played-out awkward man-boy persona. In Magic (x2), Cera plays Brink, a menacing, lascivious American student in Chile who gets off on screwing with poor Alicia’s head. Or maybe he doesn’t. Is Alicia just mentally collapsing due to her insomnia, or are Brink and the other characters as sadistic as she claims they are?
After arriving in Chile to visit her cousin Sarah (Emily Browning), her and Sarah’s friends head out to an isolated island to vacation. Before they even reach their destination, Sarah is quickly called away for mysterious reasons and Alicia is left alone with Brink, Barbara, and Sarah’s boyfriend Agustin – three aggressively inhospitable strangers.
The cast is fantastic and there’s a real organic sense to the dialogue. The cast spent some time living together during the filming and the bond they developed comes across on screen in their interactions – as hostile as these interactions may be. Temple is the obvious standout as she displays an impressive range of wide-eyed naivety and stone-cold crazy.
Alicia’s alienation from the group is amplified when they frequently speak Spanish around her without having the courtesy to translate. When she’s around Barbara, who is always studying, Alicia can hardly breathe without being passive aggressively scolded for making too much noise. And ladies, look out for a Brink. He’s an incorrigible, obnoxious twerp who relentlessly hounds Alicia. Cera manages to take this otherwise unwatchable character and give him a touch of darkness that makes him sort of interesting. I’ve never been a big fan of Cera, so this is a great relief from his tired shtick.
Sleep never comes for Alicia once they arrive at the house and after a few days, she begins to unravel. It occurs slowly and effectively – culminating in a hypnotism scene that starts off darkly comical then quickly gets disturbing (thanks, Brink!). As tension builds, Sarah’s friends are unable to handle Alicia’s contrary moods.
It appears Silva had trouble as well. As the writer-director keeps it a mystery whether Brink and others are truly fucking with Alicia or she’s just losing her mind in this alien world, he fumbles the ending. I’m all for ambiguous endings – I prefer them in many cases – but the ending of Magic Magic is just frustrating. Like, sacrifice an animal frustrating. It’s worth a watch though, especially for the vaguely dark first two acts.
A/V
It’s a DVD.
SPECIAL FEATURES
All she’s got is a 15-minute making-of feature, but it’s a pretty good one. The focus of it is Silva’s relationship with the actors and how he let them organically develop their characters. Like I mentioned above, the gang really meshes well together on screen and it’s clear in this feature how important that was to Silva.
Scream Factory brought Frank LaLoggia’s 1988 Halloween movie Lady in White to Blu-ray several years back, and now Vinegar Syndrome gives the film a 4K Ultra HD upgrade.
Vinegar Syndrome’s Lady in White 4K release is available now and shipping now!
Watch the trailer below and grab your copy from Vinegar Syndrome today.
This limited edition 4-disc 4K UHD/Blu-ray x 3 set comes with a spot gloss hard slipcase + slipcover combo (designed by Dylan Haley), includes a 40-page perfect bound book and is limited to 8,000 units. It is only available on their website and at select indie retailers.
The full Special Features package includes…
- 4-disc Set: 1x 4K Ultra HD (High Bitrate BD100) / 3x Region A Blu-ray
- 4K UHD presented in Dolby Vision High-Dynamic-Range
- Newly scanned & restored in 4K from its 35mm original camera negative
- Presented in three versions: 126-min Pre-Release Director’s Cut (UHD+BD), the 118-min Extended Home Video Cut (BD), and the 113-min Theatrical Cut (BD)
- New group commentary track with writer/director Frank LaLoggia, alongside actors Lukas Haas, Joelle Jacobi, and Len Cariou for the Pre-Release Director’s Cut
- New commentary track with Frank LaLoggia, moderated by Scott Neumyer for the Extended Home Video Cut
- New commentary track with authors Emma Westwood and Stephen A. Russell for the Extended Home Video Cut
- Archival commentary track with Frank LaLoggia for the Extended Home Video Cut
- “Learning How to Fly” (10 min) – an interview with actress Karen Powell
- “A Snapshot in Time” (9 min) – an interview with actress Lisa Taylor
- “Human Touches” (6 min) – an interview with actress Lucy Lee Flippin
- “Still Relevant” (16 min) – an interview with actress Rose Weaver
- “75% Listening, 25% Editing” (9 min) – an interview with editor Steve Mann
- “Welcome to Willowpoint Falls” (6 min) – a location featurette hosted by Benjamin Scrivens, founder of Fright-Rags
- “Dream Talking: Looking Back” – a visual group commentary for the Pre-Release Director’s Cut with Frank LaLoggia, and actors Lukas Haas, Joelle Jacobi, and Len Cariou (103 min)
- Deleted Scenes with introduction and optional commentary by writer/director Frank LaLoggia (36 min)
- Behind-the-scenes footage with introduction and optional commentary by writer/director Frank LaLoggia (16 min)
- Extended behind-the-scenes footage (73 min)
- Introduction from the 20th anniversary dvd release
- Promotional ‘industry sales’ trailer (7 min)
- 40-page perfect bound book with essays by film historians Molly Henery, Mark H. Harris, and Heidi Honeycutt (limited edition only)
- Multiple radio spots
- Theatrical trailer
- Multiple TV spots
- Workprint trailers (7 min)
- Still gallery
- Reversible sleeve artwork
- English SDH subtitles
1962. Nine-year-old Frankie Scarlatti enjoys a homespun childhood in a rustic Western New York town. The entire community gets into the spirit of Halloween, but then two bullies prank Frankie by locking him in his school cloakroom, leaving him trapped for the night. Alone and afraid, his slumber is interrupted when the ghost of a little girl appears, and Frankie witnesses the specter of her murder by an unseen assailant. Later, while recovering at home, the girl’s ghost appears to him again. With help from his older brother, Frankie begins investigating the circumstances of her death. He soon discovers that her murder was one of several unsolved crimes connected to a local child-killer. As the town’s bucolic veneer fades and long-buried secrets and tensions bubble to the surface, all of the clues to the mystery seem to point towards a huge mansion inhabited by a reclusive woman known as “The Lady in White.”
A nostalgia-driven ghost story wrapped within an intricate murder mystery and coming-of-age drama, writer-director-composer Frank LaLoggia’s passion project Lady in White remains one of the most beautiful and original American horror films of the 1980s. Featuring acclaimed actors Alex Rocco (The Godfather), Len Cariou (Executive Decision), and Sydney Lassick (Carrie, The Unseen), it boasts the first starring role by Lukas Haas (Mars Attacks, Inception) as well as breathtaking photography by Academy Award® winner Russell Carpenter (True Lies, The Lawnmower Man). Vinegar Syndrome is honored to bring this genre masterpiece to 4K UHD, newly restored from its original 35mm camera negative and presented in three versions: its pre-release director’s cut, its extended home-video version, and its original theatrical version, along with an abundance of both new and archival extras.
Paul Lê wrote here on Bloody Disgusting back in 2023, “Over the years, fans have described this film as gateway horror, but they liken it more to The Watcher in the Woods than, say, Hocus Pocus or Casper. There are chilling moments that warrant its PG-13 rating.”
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