Twisted

It is ironic because my own sentence structure is so poor when I speak, (like providing this information without context first, rather than at the end of the bit that follows), but I do love a well written and well delivered one-person monologue. There are many things to admire about it when one such works; the writing of course is key, because often there will be nothing else but the words to draw you in, plus of course there is the delivery of those words; Alan Bennett's Talking Heads pops into the mind as one example, but I have also seen stage plays where one actor holds the whole audience with an engaging and long period of speech.

Such things are why I really enjoyed Twisted, while also being pretty impressed by it at the same time. I will not say any details of the story, suffice to say that one teenage boy tells another about something that happened the night before while he was with a girl. The story begins as the boys walk into the woods, and as he talks, we find ourselves moving into a room, through doors which are part of a house which isn't there really, then back into the woods – even going from day to night and back to day again. Technically the movement of the camera is smooth and the transitions are nearly seamless in how they go – it is pretty rare that you will watch a film again simply to see how they manage to make the cuts between scenes, but I think more than I will do so in this case, because they are great – almost feeling like one take in many cases. However, what is more impressive is that the reason you'll have to watch again is because you are paying too much attention to the words to really appreciate the rest.

This is down to two things, the writing, but also the delivery. In terms of writing I would say that the content is not without flaw when you look back on it – but it is retrospectively, but during. This is because the structure and energy of the words sees them very well constructed so it is not just that you want to hear what comes next so much as also wanting to hear how it comes. This is greatly helped by Trovato's delivery; personally I did not like his character, but this is not a problem because his delivery is great. His emotion and tone changes in a way that matches the transitions of the film – so even though he is telling the events back, he is physically and emotionally in his own story, while also telling it. This adds to the engagement as the story moves through different layers. Not only is he good when on-screen, he is also on-screen for pretty much the entire film which, even though it is a short, is still impressive.

I don't think the film is without weakness, but I do think that the strengths are so strong and so well played to, that any issues I had were all in retrospect. It has great flow to the writing, performance, and technical delivery, all of which makes it engaging throughout.