"A WOUNDED FAWN" // TRIBECA 2022
A WOUNDED FAWN is a wild, subversive, ambitious and explosive movie that takes a lot of risks, most of which pay off. Josh Ruben plays Bruce, a man in a room full of buyers at an art auction. Most there are buyers, bidding on items that they are hopeful to bring home to their clients. Josh loses out on a bid for an item from Ancient Greece depicting "The Furies." Kate (Malin Barr) outbids him and walks away with the statue for her client. Strangely, Bruce ends up paying Kate a visit. We then get a glimpse into who Bruce truly is: a murderous psychopath who speaks to a mysterious owl creature that tells him to kill. The next sequence delves deeper into that: he's heading on a vacation getaway with a woman named Meredith (Sarah Lind). Meredith thinks that a romantic weekend away is what's in the cards. However, Josh's true nature is exposed fairly quickly and the murder within comes out again. However, Meredith isn't quite the victim that Josh assumed.
What follows is a strange and mind-bending trip first following Bruce's victims to then shifting inside of Bruce's own fractured mind and watch his unraveling. By switching up the narrative and the entire storytelling style, Director Travis Stevens really unleashes a brutally original work here. The introduction of "The Furies" from Ancient Greece isn't an accident and the melting of surrealism and reality is unnerving and simply wild. Josh Ruben's unhinged performance is wonderful to watch (and often frightening) and Sarah Lind is equally wonderful (as is the rest of the cast here). Unwrapping toxic masculinity, the horrors of mankind (especially MENkind) and gender dynanics throughout the years, A Wounded Fawn has a lot on its plate and tackles all of them with a gory, demented way. It'll knock you off balance and have you hopeful for new and intriguing horror films to come.
GRADE: A-
WRITTEN BY Travis Stevens, Nathan Faudree DIRECTED BY Travis Stevens STARRING Josh Ruben, Sarah Lind, Malin Barr, Katie Kuang, Laksmi Hedemark, Tanya Everett, Marshall Taylor Thurman, Leandro Taub, Neal Mayer SELECTED AS PART OF THE 2022 TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL. FOR MORE INFO: A WOUNDED FAWN