Miranda Veil is a wonderfully schizophrenic film — a morbidly twisted love story, a peyotized road movie, and a deranged black comedy that defies traditional storytelling conventions and offers an original, surprising cinematic experience. There is madness here, but it has a method.
Writer/director Levin Garbisch questions political correctness without resorting to gratuitous shock value. That is a refreshing combination. It takes courage to make a comedy featuring a woman enduring beatings, floggings, stabbings, her face crushed with a rock, her head split open with an axe, and more.
The film’s treatment of all those atrocities, however, is nothing short of masterful. When it’s, so to speak, real, it’s hinted at; it happens off-camera, and we only see the results.
It only becomes overtly graphic around the point where the film crosses an imaginary line between realism and surrealism, and then it goes so over the top that viewing it as anything but satirical would overlook its intent.
This approach allows the film to deliver a powerful message about the absurdity of violence in society while still entertaining audiences. The violence serves as a darkly humorous commentary on the mainstream’s desensitization to brutality, pushing the boundaries of what is acceptable in film.
Contrary to what might appear on the surface, Miranda Veil is not misogynistic, or misanthropic, or nihilistic. Unlike, say, Happy Death Day, Palm Springs, or Happy Death Day 2U, where the difference between life and death is the same as between sleep and wakefulness and where the world resets every 12 hours, Miranda Veil has a deep concern for the mystery, meaning, and purpose of Life in general, as well as an inborn respect for the inviolability of each individual life.
Miranda Veil challenges traditional horror tropes by exploring complex philosophical concepts and existential themes, making it an introspective, thought-provoking, and intellectually stimulating watch that invites viewers to embrace the unknown, appreciate the beauty in life’s uncertainties, and contemplate the nature of existence and the significance of individual experiences in a seemingly chaotic world that often feels meaningless.
The character of Miranda (Annabel Barrett) serves as a metaphor for the enigmatic nature of life itself, and the three adjectives Soren (Zach Steffey) uses to label her (accessible, unpredictable, and intriguing) may be used to describe the movie — well, maybe not so much ‘accessible’ (its idiosyncrasies might put some people off), but then this is a film of which you can say that it’s not for everybody, and say it as a compliment.
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