She's Allergic to Cats

Michael Pinkney (playing himself) is a man struggling with his lower income lifestyle in the shadow of the film industry. His job is degrading, his home is infested with rats and his mind constantly wanders into a lo-fi dreamscape that mirrors his analog video experiments.

"She's Allergic to Cats" comes to us from writer-director Michael Reich, who previously co-directed "Video Town" with star Pinkney. We also have Sonja Kinski ("Holidays") as the romantic lead, as much as this film can be said to have much romance. The name that actually jumped out at me, though, was executive producer Andrew van den Houten. As a huge fan of his film "Headspace", I was excited to see something he was attached to.

Trying to describe this film is a bit of a challenge. On some levels, it is pretty straightforward – a pet groomer who meets a young woman and is trying to advance his relationship with her. But the overall weirdness permeates the film. Situations abound concerning rats, bananas, rats that eat bananas, and close-up shots of dogs getting their genitals washed. Other situations are normal except that the people involved could be fresh out of Richard Linklater's "Slacker", such as a man who only watches movies with talking animals.

"Cats" made the rounds at Fantasia in 2016, receiving mixed-to-positive reviews. I missed it at that time, but luckily was able to catch it at the 2017 Boston Underground Film Festival (BUFF). Although this is a hard film to market, and probably has no wide-release potential, it should not be easily disregarded. The video experiments alone show a strong skill and artistic vision utilizing the VHS aesthetic, something that has been coming back lately with "Lake Nowhere" and the folks at Everything is Terrible. In fact, if plans do not already exist to do so, this seems like the sort of film that would be perfect to release on VHS rather than DVD… if only they still made VCRs to play it.

A trippy comedy for weirdos. Loved it. Unlike anything else I've seen. Funny and twisted the film is populated with memorable characters and a signature glitch art aesthetic. Highly recommended.

So I really had a fun time with this, the lead actor was very cute charming and sympathetic and it was just the kind of weird that I tend to go for, but it seemed a bit aimless and kind of unfinished by the end, I mean there was no real punch or payoff that I could see, Just a slow and very strange and still by the end of the movie burgeoning disintegration of a poor average schmoe's life who was only trying to make it in Hollywoodland doing a bit of a gross demeaning job and living in a s&&thole apartment with an unnerving rat infestation that his landlord was rather useless at fixing for him, and then his first date in a long time dies on him after a very strange night all because she happened to be...well, you know! I fail to see what exactly made this a horror movie, it felt like the story was heading that way and that the guy was kind of starting to lose it, but nobody was murdered and it didn't even have any blood in it, it was just about his problems and personal inadequacies and how his rat problem and love life brutally came crashing together to the poor odd girl's cost. I loved the very garbled old vhs-esc distortions that run throughput the movie, they really gave it a certain flair And added kick, I loved all that stuff, very cool. I don't know had a great little time just chilling out to this movie really and I liked it a lot for it's highly effective weird edgy ambiance and dark indie movie charm. Somewhat dark but not really a horror movie at all in my book, but very enjoyable for a certain kind of mindset nevertheless, definitely worth the time to watch if you like that slow descent into the whirlpool of modern alienation madness kind of movies, you've been warned though, it's a weird one! 🐈 🐀 💀 x.