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Starring Juno Temple and Michael Cera, Magic Magic is an indie horror film, inspired by an urban legend of what happened to a girl whilst vacationing in a Brazilian hostel.
Alicia (Temple) is an American girl who has travelled to Chile to visit her cousin Sarah (Emily Browning). Whilst staying with her cousin's friends, insomniac Alicia starts to lose a grip on what is real and what she is imagining, leaving the audience to wonder who the real bad guy is...
Marketed as an intense psychological horror, Magic Magic has all of the ingredients to make a fantastic film - the strong cast, great background story and the novel addition of the story being told through an unreliable narrator (Alicia) should have been enough to create edge-of-your-seat and spine-tingling chills. However, it doesn't exactly work out like that.
Once Alicia arrives in Chile, her cousin Sarah is called away almost immediately, leaving Alicia to spend two nights alone with Sarah's friends, Brink (Michael Cera), Agustin (Agustin Silva) and Barbara (Catalina Sandino Moreno). The friends seem cold from the offset, with Cera nailing a particularly disconcerting performance as Brink, who manages to appear creepy and unnerving without even saying anything particularly offensive. However, despite Cera's discomforting presence and the group's tendency to speak to eachother in Spanish, meaning that Alicia can not understand, as the film progresses it becomes a struggle to see what the group are doing that makes Alicia scream down the phone to Sarah that they are 'all sadists'.
For example, while the fact the boys shoot a bird when they go hunting would upset many people, myself included, it isn’t far-fetched to think that an American teenage boy with a shotgun would shoot an animal. The film also tries to use the fact the boys tease Alicia and laugh at her misfortune as evidence of their cruelty, but again this isn’t exactly unusual behaviour for teen boys. Alicia's paranoia makes these overreactions a little easier to swallow, but more could have been done to make these characters appear as the sinister threats that they are supposed to be at this point in the film.
Over time, it becomes evident that there is something seriously wrong with Alicia; her cousin joins them but Alicia is struggling to sleep and her behaviour becomes increasingly bizarre. This is when the film finally starts to pick up. Despite the lack of genuine jumps or scares, the intrigue of the story and where the film is going is just enough to keep you tense and maintain your interest as you desperately start to wonder what is wrong with Alicia... and that is what makes the film's conclusion all the more disappointing.
The final scenes gradually become more and more ridiculous, eventually becoming reminiscent of a certain goat scene in Drag Me To Hell. However, alongside being totally far-fetched and implausible, the conclusion is also incredibly out of place in Magic Magic. The conclusion is rushed and makes no sense in relation to the rest of the story and it completely bypasses the tone of the majority of the film. Although certainly not without its faults, Magic Magic at least maintained an element of realism up until this point and had they decided to opt for a realistic ending, rather than prioritizing their bid to shock the audience, it would probably have made the film a much more compelling watch.
The one positive part of the entire film comes from the strong performances; as well as creepy Cera, Juno Temple gives the part her all and truly embodies Alicia's paranoia, which becomes more and more apparent as her mental state deteriorates. Emily Browning also does her best to add some realism to the madness and gives an equally strong performance, despite being underused. However, strong performances are just not enough to cancel out the film's fatal flaws, with its fascinating concept being ruined by a ridiculous narrative which results in an underwhelming watch... In fact, resulting in the worst film that I have watched this year.
★☆☆☆☆
Magic Magic is available to watch from 18th April!
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