So…I want to preface my review of this one by saying I watched this when I was a bit tired, I thought it would be a bit more accessable, it wasnt…And as a result im not 100% certain I really truely got to grips with it…As such my thoughts here are basically ‘as I found it’. and may well change in time.

With that being said, ‘Shredder Orpheus’ is an experimental/art housey type skate punk reimagining of ‘The Odyssey’ a famous greek tale following Orpheus as he navigates hell itself to find and reclaim his partner who’s taken up residency with Hades…Of course, with this being an art housey skate punk style reimagining, its not exactly as clean cut as all that and does have quite a few weird and wonderful moments throughout. But I think the biggest problem I have with this movie is just that it doesnt *quite* commit to the weirdness ENOUGH for me.

The promotional materials for it put the film on par with ‘Forbidden Zone’ for eccentricity…and, while there is a little bit of that present in terms of how it presents itself (hyper colourful, overly weird designed sets) it isnt really leaning into that from a ‘vibe’ perspective and…I’d argue actually probably has a closer relation to ‘Split’ (1989) or ‘Liquid Sky’ (1982) than anything else…In fact those 2 films go a little stranger and more over the top than this does really…So it’d kind of end up (in my mind at least) being the B-picture to those!

Its a fine enough production on the whole, but it just never quite manages to muster ANY of its aspects to take it well and truely over the line and into something special.

The scripts alright, it has a clean 3 act structure with smooth transitions between acts, but the pacings SUPER slow for an 80-90 minuite feature, the tone is non committal, it kind of leans towards wanting to be quirky at times, but never goes ‘full on’ instead always pulling back (I assume to try and maintain a level of professionalism)

The dialogue is a purposfully a little over stiff and there are some decent cult-ish moments here. But not enough to really stand out or make me sit up and pay attention…

While the very premise itself of (punk band mad max…on skateboards) sounds fun and weird, it just doesnt quite translate to something delightfully watchable. its just…there.

The directions a bit of a mixed bag too, while i’d say this film absolutely has a highly styalized and creative visionary at the healm, there were a lot of moments while watching this where I was just kind of left wondering aloud ‘why?’, why is this scene set up the way it is, why is there so much dead space on a lot of these shots, why are these characters having this conversation in this way now? whats the creative decision behind this kind of scene structuring? a lot of it felt like the answer i’d get back would be ‘Because we shot it, and we didnt wanna waste money by NOT including it…’

The cine is colourful and largely well composed in terms of actor placement, they DO try to get the most out of there set space, but as mentioned the amount of dead space around our subjects combined with an edit that seemingly did just throw everything down that was shot, kind of left this thing feeling a bit overstuffed and only emphisized the uncertain nature of what we were being shown and why…

Performances were mixed to poor. LOTS of dry bland deliveries, LOTS of long emotional pauses or just scenes of people embracing…I dont really have much more to say other than that…its not the worst i’ve seen, but equally it wasnt comedically bad either. I just found it a little over dry.

And this thing has an amazing soundtrack. punky rocky new wave stuffs a big win in my eyes!

all in all, Shredder Orpheus is a classic case of the sum of its parts not equalling the sum of its whole. It has a lot of good ideas, but they kind of fell flat to me, and while I didnt hate this thing, I struggled…I think the marketing that this was a weird and quirky film was what ultimately torpeado’d this thing for me. as had I known going in that the ‘comedy weirdness’ was VERY subtle and that, in fact, it was much more a neon soaked art house film with a couple of weird bits predominantly…then i’d have probably saved this one for another day.

As it stands, yeh, its worth checking out. But let the weirdness be a nice extra rather than the USP.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/shredder-orpheus/