It may be because it was my third screening of the day and it started at midnight, but Tallulah Hazekemp Schwab’s Mr. K made me feel utterly dizzy and delirious.
Crispin Glover stars as Mr. K, a traveling magician who cannot locate the exit of the hotel where he stayed the night before. The harder he tries to escape, the further into the nightmare he descends as he attempts to navigate the ominous hotel and its odd tenants.
The real star of the show is the incredible production design by Maarten Piersma and Manolito Glas. From the moment Mr. K arrives, we immediately understand where he’s staying. There’s a picturesque quality to its design with the promise of fantasy bubbling underneath every nook and cranny. Fantastical as it is, though, there is something foreboding about the sickly green tones coating the walls. As the nightmare unfolds, the hotel falls into disrepair. The tears in the wallpaper, the holes in the wall, the damage to the furniture—they all feel like scars on a body. Piersma and Glas drench the set in a kineticism that transcends the performers inhabiting the space.
Stan Lee Cole’s cacophonous score enhances the delirium unfolding on screen. It doesn’t feel like a traditional horror score. It’s quite eclectic and, at times, almost joyous. But the manic turns it takes and pulsing energy coursing through the horns culminate in a sensory overload that will surely put the audience in Mr. K’s desperate shoes.
Writer-director Schwab certainly has a vision, there is no denying it. And there are moments where Mr. K soars. The big detractor, however, is that we are never given anything to latch on to when it comes to the titular character. The only thing we really know about him is that he is a magician struggling to feel seen and appreciated, based on a short cold open before the title card. While we can piece it together, it’s hard to invest given everything around him.
There’s a poignant throughline here—a man suffocating under the weight of the world, fighting for a way out of the chaos, to be heard above the noise, to find a clear path. With the brilliant production team, Schwab is able to viscerally portray this and, ultimately, allows it to shine through. The script dilutes the poignancy, though, as Schwab jarringly transitions set piece to set piece with little connective tissue.
Schwab’s script seems more invested in the cast of characters that inhabit the hotel and the horrid chaos than in giving us a full character. His motivations are unclear, and his reactions and decisions are unmoored. Glover tries his best, but it felt as if even he didn’t really know what was going on. Much like his character, things just sort of happen to him.
Glover is such a dynamic performer that often goes the route you’d least expect with his characters. He embodies them with a thorough physicality that allows the internality of these people to shine through. He isn’t given that opportunity with Mr. K, a character that feels like it should be ripe for interesting and nuanced choices.
Mr. K is equal parts exciting and baffling. It’s maddening yet impressive. Much like the very hotel we occupy, there are many dead ends that don’t quite work. But for every dead end, there’s an audacious piece of ambition from the team that you can’t help but admire and wonder how they made that work. There are a lot of interesting metaphors at play that take time and patience to crack, but sometimes the metaphors collide and muddy the waters.
Mr. K will divide audiences; I can’t see a world where anyone comes to a consensus on the quality or what it’s trying to say. One thing that is certain, though, it’s completely unforgettable.
Review Courtesy of Adam Patla
Image Courtesy of Paradiso Entertainment via IMDB