Women have always been a little more in touch with their feral side than most societal norms would have us believe. Despite—or perhaps because of—being shoved for decades and millennia into subservient boxes, we have never quite lost the edge. There has been a noticeable uptick of late in the exposure and exploration of this ferocity, predominantly through the lens of motherhood. Most recently, the adaptation of Rachel Yoder’s novel, Nightbitch, in which a stay-at-home mother wakes one morning to find she is turning into a dog, took this approach. While, compared to its source material, the film adaptation does not quite lean as hard into the ferocity that comes along with the core of animal instinct that ensures survival, it does something else quite effectively enough.
I had NIGHTBITCH very much in the forefront of my mind while watching writer-director Mary Dauterman’s BOOGER. They don’t have much in common other than the idea that the central women believe themselves to be turning into animals, yet to me they felt very much in a conversation with one another. While one is about motherhood and the other is about loss, both take an approach that aims to interrogate our basest responses.
BOOGER is, perhaps above all else, entirely unafraid to be revolting. It is ultimately an exploration of grief, but it’s process of doing so frequently tips into the land of unsettlingly close shots of our main character’s mouth. At the start of the film we are introduced, via phone video recordings, to Anna (Grace Glowicki), her roommate Izzy (Sofia Dobrushin), and a cat who has made its way into their apartment in the night. Izzy dubs this ball of black fuzz “Booger”, and the dynamics are set. That the narrative and tone switch so quickly to one of sadness and still remain effective is a testament to the talent of Glowicki’s acting. From those intimate video clips, we immediately snap to Anna, hollow eyed, rolling a bicycle into her apartment. Izzy, it turns out, was recently killed in a biking accident.
While everyone around her is clearly trying their best to cope with the loss of someone who is immediately apparent as the connective tissue and vibrant personality of a whole circle of people, Anna is completely numb. She stops showing up to work or answering her boss’s calls, she pushes almost everyone away when they try to reach out to her. When she finds Izzy’s phone among her things in the bedroom, she enters a pattern of replaying the videos Izzy was constantly taking of them together, and of their cat Booger. What ultimately sends her spiraling for the core of the movie, though, is Booger’s re- and then immediate disappearance. He bites her and escapes out the window again into the night, and she becomes hyperfocused on finding him again even as her body clearly exhibits changes that indicate she is, in fact, turning into the cat that bit her. What unfolds from there is a slightly surreal, more than a little gross exploration of body horror and grief.
There is an exorbitant amount of focus on Anna’s mouth throughout the film as her journey into herself and her new catlike tendencies manifests itself most viscerally through the hacking up of hairballs. BOOGER is probably not the film for the misophonia sufferer in your circle, but it is a surreal trip through the ways our minds can play tricks on us at the worst of times. There is a point at the core of this film about the need for connection with one another at our weakest times, and perhaps even a nod to the importance of documenting memories—in whatever form—so we can carry them with us. We would not know Izzy at all, really, were it not for her constant friend-event-filming. She is an obviously passionate character about the things and the people she loves, and would laugh in the face of anyone who tried to say that constantly having your phone out lessens the experience of a moment. These videos become central not just to painting an effective picture of the friendship, but to Anna’s own connection to her sense of reality.
BOOGER is as much about Izzy and this memory making as it is about Anna and her internal mental struggle. The two weave together to tell an unusual but effective story of dealing with the loss of a loved one even when it seems impossible. Anna is frequently an abrasive personality, clearly in the throes of her pain while simultaneously refusing to acknowledge either her own or other peoples. She has taken on a level of personal responsibility and blame for losses the others in the film can hardly even wrap their heads around, and as a result her grief comes through her like a raw, pulsing nerve.
Perhaps that is why so many of the film’s more visceral moments are so effective.
The most unexpected element of BOOGER—and one of the strongest tools in its arsenal—is the cinematography. The home phone videos provide an intimate look into a friendship that clearly kept Anna going more than she is perhaps ready to absorb. The close-up shots of Anna’s mouth are enough to make anyone squirm. But the most effective shots are her dream sequences, where she looks for Booger in a surreal landscape of pitch blackness and fur, with shots that feel unexpectedly reminiscent of UNDER THE SKIN.
That being one of my favorite movies, I could wax poetic on just what such similarities could add to the story, but suffice it to say, while it will not be for everyone, BOOGER is a worthy entry into the current trend of feral-domestic animal/woman media. It puts all the messy, dark underbelly of unexpected grief to the forefront and challenges you to respond. It brings forward the ways we let our dark mental paths consume us in times of crisis, and the ways we unintentionally hurt those that love us. It is also just so, so deeply strange, which will either work for you or put you off.
Either way, though, don’t worry. Nothing bad happens to Booger.
BOOGER is on VOD now from Dark Sky Films
Tags: Booger, Dark Sky Films, Garrick Bernard, Grace Glowicki, Heather Mattazarro, Kenny Suleimanagich, Marcia DeBonis, Mary Dauterman, Nightbitch, Rachel Yoder, Sofia Dobrushin
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