You know you’ve probably left your mark on the horror genre when the premiere of your new movie heralds you as a scream queen. This week signals the ScreamFest premiere of Affection, the feature debut of writer-director BT Meza, and the early marketing for the film goes to great lengths to let you know that Jessica Rothe belongs in an elite inner circle of horror movie stars. But you know what? There are no lies here. Jessica Rothe is one of our scream queen greats, and that starpower is put to good use by Meza and the rest of the team behind Affection.
When Ellie (Rothe) wakes up, she wakes up to a home filled with strangers. Standing across the room from her is a man (Joseph Cross) who claims to be her husband, and a young girl (Julianna Layne) who calls her mother. But there’s a problem – she’s never seen either of these people before, and even the face in the mirror looks unfamiliar to Ellie. She’s ready to fight, or even to flee, until the man who isn’t her husband begins to explain. Ellie has been in a terrible accident, and her current bout of disassociation is one of the unfortunate side effects.
When confronted with a past she does not remember, Ellie does her best to adapt to the life she’s supposed to live. She spends time with her daughter, trying to rebuild a parental bond, and listens attentively as her husband shares his own memories of their time as high school sweethearts. But for as much as she tries to force a breakthrough, all she can remember is the fake life she’s stitched together from the fragments of media and stories. And it won’t be long before Ellie realizes the true cost of turning her two halves into a whole.
Affection is a vehicle for Rothe, and unsurprisingly, that’s the movie’s greatest strength. It’s hard to shake the notion that Hollywood has dropped the ball a bit with Rothe. With the success of the Happy Death Day franchise, the actress seemed ready to make the jump from genre cinema – great though it may be – to more mainstream studio fare. But that’s the strange contradiction of her body of work: films like Happy Death Day 2U and Boy Kills World carried the faint whiff of box office failures with her, even as they proved Rothe a versatile actress capable of blending comedy and action in equal measure.
And the truth is, even as a critic, sometimes you just want to see the onscreen talent succeed. I like Rothe as a performer. I want her to make more movies - preferably more genre movies, as she is so often game to take big swings onscreen. And when your target audience is already predisposed to cheering for one-third of a three-hander, that gives your horror movie a pretty safe floor. Odds were always good that I was going to connect with the lead performance of Affection, so the success of the film was always going to be measured by the elements around her.
To that end, Affection gets just enough right for a passing grade. For most of its runtime, Meza’s story feels like a kindred spirit to the kind of low-budget, genre-bending horror that seemed to be everywhere in the 2010s. Then, about two-thirds of the way through, the movie lays its full set of cards on the table, revealing itself as less Nacho Vigalondo and more David Cronenberg-lite. This mashup of technology and body horror never quite meshes perfectly with the rest of the movie, but one must give credit for Meza’s instincts. Most horror movies are in need of a second gear; not all horror movies find it.
Still. If Meza shares Cronenberg’s appreciation for the new flesh, he lacks the director’s talent for social commentary writ large. Without giving much away, Affection feels more like a writing exercise than a feverish indictment of technology. That’s not necessarily a knock – science fiction is a big church, and there’s plenty of room for ideas big and small – but it does prevent Affection from graduating beyond its programmer status to something truly special. Cross’s decision to play Bruce with such soft-spoken restraint also leads to the film's somewhat muted conclusion, limiting the story’s potential as a Shellian story of one man’s descent into madness.
So Affection is a perfectly satisfactory horror movie, and that is as much as any genre filmmaker can hope to be. Rothe once again flashes the full range of her genre starpower, and Meza equates himself well as a first-time director. Affection also feels built in a lab for a film festival crowd, offering just the right balance of concept and practical effects to be a hit with people seeking out the right balance of sci-fi and horror. It may not reinvent the wheel, but you give horror fans a reason to show up, and you better believe they will meet you halfway. [3/5]
