For better and for worse, the gay teen thriller Ganymede manages to capture the bleak horror of having to listen to a frothing anti-gay rant from some amped-up street corner preacher, or loud-mouthed bully. The kind of slur-filled noise that transmits fear and hate, and not a hint of Christian love.
Too many queer and questioning teens — like the film’s protagonist, high school wrestler Lee Fletcher IV (Jordan Doww) — are subjected to that barrage every day, at home, at church, at school. Lee’s small-town life is one long sermon on traditional values, ministered by his strict religious parents, and hellfire-spouting church pastor, all of whom are aware that the boy is battling certain so-called demons.
Lee is battling those demons literally, not just internally. In his nightmares, and in his waking life, he’s physically stalked by a hideous, skull-visaged creature that creeps out of his closet, or rises from the shadows in a corner of the room.
Conjured by Lee’s fragile, tortured psyche, the Creature (performed, with the aid of prosthetics and makeup, by Lucas Turner) is his sexual confusion and “reprobate thoughts” given physical shape. And, it seems, the Creature is especially triggered by Lee’s attraction to fellow senior Kyle (Pablo Castelblanco), who is gay and out, and totally into Lee.
Thankfully, Kyle is written with emotional complexity to go along with his crush on the good-looking jock. Portrayed with wit and confidence by Castelblanco, Kyle recognizes that Lee is suffering and confused, and not exactly boyfriend material, but he can’t help falling for the wrestler’s kind soul.
In a sweet heart-to-heart, spoken in Spanish and English, between Kyle and his supportive mom, Kim (Sofia Yepes), he confesses his feelings for Lee. His mom warns him to be careful about this boy.
In a different scene, and for completely different reasons, Lee’s mom, Floy (Robyn Lively), warns her son to be careful about Kyle. The cracked mirror images of maternal concern mark one bright spot of understated storytelling in a film — co-directed by Colby Holt and Sam Probst, from a script by Holt — battling its own demons of overacting and over-the-top psychodrama.
Lee’s parents don’t just preach and lecture about their traditional values. Floy and Big Lee (Joe Chrest) — as in “Bigly,” ha ha — shout and weep over their son like the world has ended, or their kid has died. Floy screams her frustrations into the bathroom mirror. Big Lee breaks down sobbing.
These responses might be psychologically valid in a real-world context, but as depicted here, they just look unhinged. Floy screaming to Lee that Kyle is evil because he flaunts his gayness is both high camp and utter drivel: “He’s a little Flaunt Leroy!” That’s an actual line.
“Mom, stop,” pleads Lee. And, he’s right. Please, stop. But then the family’s church leader, Pastor Royer (David Koechner), also calls Kyle a “little Flaunt Leroy.” That’s before the preacher whips out his makeshift electroshock machine for some unsanctioned conversion therapy.
Yet, conversion therapy, and attempts to pray away the gay, only leave Lee even more disturbed, and vulnerable to attack by his demons. Hence, Lee is constantly being scared awake by supposedly frightening, usually imaginary, brushes with the Creature.
He’s holding hands with Kyle, but suddenly, it isn’t Kyle, it’s a demon. Cut to, Lee waking up screaming. A girl at school plays footsie with Lee under the cafeteria table, but it isn’t a girl’s foot, it’s a demon! Lee screams.
Again and again, the film goes back to the same underwhelming well of scream cuts, stirring in blood and body horror, but never evoking the terror that truly grips Lee: his fear of himself.
Ganymede (★★☆☆☆) is available to streamon cable and digital VOD, including Apple TV, Fandango at Home, and Prime Video.
America's first female astronaut to be launched into space, Dr. Sally Ride withstood the pressures of being first, including untold amounts of ignorant, sexist hostility and public scrutiny. She understood the risks and responsibility that rested on her confident shoulders. And Sally, a new National Geographic documentary, recounts much of her experience in unflinching detail.
Director Cristina Costantini (Science Fair) dives right into the whirlwind of press and public hoopla that accompanied the buildup to, then glowing success of Ride's first launch in 1983, aboard the space shuttle Challenger.
There isn't a great deal of originality in Jamie Wax's new play, Call Me Izzy, but it may well mark the first time a white porcelain toilet has been featured so prominently in a Broadway production.
The 90-minute, one-woman show opens in the bathroom of a mobile home, situated in a trailer park in rural Louisiana, where Isabelle "Izzy" Scutley (Jean Smart, Hacks) spends much of her time, scribbling on sheets of toilet paper with a mascara pen. Poetically, she describes the various shades of blue produced by the disinfectant tablets that she gingerly drops in the tank. To her, they are beautiful. To her husband, Ferd, not so much.
Much like the recent Akira Kurosawa Explains His Movies and Yogurt (with Live & Active Cultures!) at Woolly Mammoth, Emily Burns' Frankenstein, now at The Shakespeare Theatre, clings to the bumper of a more established artist's life and work.
Whereas Akira wrapped itself around one of film's finest auteurs, Burns uses Mary Shelley's gothic classic along with context from Shelley's life to make points, various and sundry. Although there is more substance here than in Akira, hitching a ride with Frankenstein feels equally unnecessary. Because, shed the gothic set and references to a monster, and this play is basically a portrait of a modern marriage.
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