I don’t like to mix my “other” life with my role here at DG, but, sometimes, it bears discussing. In my capacity as a development executive and script consultant, I find myself tackling a lot of less than stellar material. The bulk of my time is spent advising, suggesting, critiquing, and generally trying to help folks improve the overall quality of their work and get it to a place where it can move beyond the conceptualization phase and on to the pitching stage. On rare occasion, though, quite the opposite will happen- I’ll find myself confronted with the rare creative whose authorial voice is so strong, whose film making abilities are so assured and engaging, who’s just so damn talented that I stop and ask myself, “why the hell hasn’t someone just hired this person to make a fucking movie yet?”
Enter Izzy Lee.
If you’re a veteran of genre film festivals over the past decade or so, hopefully Lee is a filmmaker who doesn’t need an introduction. Beginning with 2013’s LEGITIMATE (which she wrote, directed, produced, and starred in), Lee has eked out a place for herself as the premier horror short filmmaker, generating nearly two dozen projects in the last nine years and garnering a reputation for consistently enjoyable, thought provoking, and just damn good stuff that’s played everywhere from Cinepocalypse to Fantasia Fest. While she really came into her own and hit the genre world’s radar with 2015’s Tristan Risk-starring H.P. Lovecraft homage INNSMOUTH, Lee has ramped up her game in the past few years and begun branching out into more diverse, experimental, and wry territory, beginning with 2019’s sardonic satire THE OBLITHERATION OF CHICKENS and continuing on with the COVID-era DISCO GRAVEYARD. Though her work has always been solid, Lee’s latest two efforts are a definite game-changer, with one in particular establishing that she’s the director someone just plain needs to hire to make the leap from shorts to feature-length cinema.
Lee’s latest, MEMENTO MORI, is more mood piece than narrative, though the mood it evokes is one that’ll delight any technophile or retro-80s fan. Clocking in at less than two minutes, the film takes the form of a meditative series of blue-hued shots inside a laboratory circa 1983, where an isolated scientist (Megan Duffy) contemplates life and death in a FRANKENSTEIN-inspired monologue before the mounting tension gives way to a final jump scare involving Lee herself in a cameo role. Moody, broody, and dripping with VIDEODROME-esque “science will both save us and destroy us” vibes, it recalls some of Lee’s more quiet works, especially her seminal 2017 feature RITES OF VENEGEANCE, and feels like it belongs right at home in an ABCS OF DEATH installment.
More impressively, though—and the film that serves to be a real game-changer for Lee’s career- is MEAT FRIEND, a short that throws down the gauntlet and demonstrates that she understands the concept of horror comedy far better than the myriad filmmakers who think that copious amounts of blood and tired bong jokes maketh a genuinely funny movie. Taking the form of a sitcom parody in the TIM AND ERIC/BEEF HOUSE vein, the short stars Marnie McKendry (daughter of Rebekah and David) as Billie, a doe-eyed elementary school girl whose naïve decision to microwave raw hamburger meat gives birth to the titular abomination, a bug-eyed, slack-jawed monster with the voice of Tom Waits (Steve Johanson) and the soul of GRAND THEFT AUTO’s Trevor Phillips. What follows are a series of satirical skits modeled on both sitcom tropes and 90s educational videos, as Meat Friend attempts to instruct Billie on everything she needs to succeed in life, including shiv making and the perils of the Easter Bunny. The power of the short lies in Lee’s fundamental understanding of the simultaneous absurdity, mundanity, and corniness of 90s sitcom and edutainment culture, as the camera work, writing, and general ambiance perfectly apes the material it’s satirizing, from the FULL HOUSE-style credits to the MIDI-esque transitional music to the intentionally hammy (pun intended) interactions between Billie and her mom (MEMENTO MORI’s Duffy). Part of the weirdo appeal of retro sitcoms is how they asked audiences to accept bizarro premises as perfectly ordinary (Your wife dies? Move a bunch of dudes into your house to raise your kids! Your fiancée abandoned you at a bar on your wedding night? You work there now!), and Lee understands and exploits that absurdity to maximum effect, as Meat Friend’s admonitions and life lessons grow progressively more unhinged and violent, even as the short maintains an atmosphere of all-pervasive chipperness. It’s a contrast that works incredibly well, and with its snappy dialogue and Johanson’s delightfully unhinged voice performance, the short is easily Lee’s best work yet and more than serves as a proof of concept for her ability to tackle a feature length film.
MEMENTO MORI and MEAT FRIEND are both relatively new and set to hit the festival circuit, but, with COVID restrictions lifting and folks returning to the theaters, hopefully they’ll have plenty of eyes in front of them soon—and hopefully, some of those eyes will belong to people who get Lee’s talent and allow her to make the feature she’s meant to.
Follow Izzy Lee on Twitter @NihilNoctemFilm
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