Gallery: Bellflower

Is Evan Glodell’s Bellflower a genre bending game-changer or a thoughtlessly juvenile examination of traumatized love? Even after seeing the film twice and taking with Glodell himself I’m still not sure. Bellflower’s schizophrenic aesthetic (half-blurred images, smooth tracking shots, grizzly violence) matches an incredibly subjective narrative (flashbacks, distrusting memory, fantasy), yet this correlation doesn’t make the film any less jarring. Glodell mixes genres like oil and water, fusing aspects of horror, melodrama, and coming-of-age to create the cinematic equivalent of a Frankenstein’s monster. There’s poetry in the madness, but also plenty of self-indulgence.

Read Full Article: MOVIE REVIEW: Bellflower