If you don’t know who Ti West is, that’s about to change starting right now. Though it’s been available on VOD since the beginning of the month, West’s astoundingly assured The House of the Devil makes its theatrical bow this Friday, October 30th, at which point the world will hopefully begin to take more notice. If you make the (correct!) choice to wait and see THOTD on the big screen, you can get your West fix starting today, as his new web series at IFC.com, Dead & Lonely, premieres. Each day this week at 12pm, a new episode will go live. Five episodes, five days, five minutes each. Nice and tidy. Though maybe they should have gone for six episodes in six days at six minutes each to establish a more satanic groove. Whatever the case, this is a great way to get West’s name out there and build even more buzz for this Friday’s main event.
To be completely honest, after the formal mastery of The House of the Devil, I had to readjust to the seemingly slapdash production value of Dead & Lonely, which feels like it was shot in a few hours. This first installment of the series follows a timid LA dude, Justin (Justin Rice), who is contacted by a rather forward pretty girl, Lee (Paige Stark), through the website www.dateordie.net (in a bit of meta-advertising, click on that link to go to that company’s “real” site). Lee wants to come over to meet Justin and… how shall we say this… get physical with him?
West’s most important collaborator, sound designer—and, with this series, composer—Graham Reznick raises the bar immeasurably and helps to create a palpable sense of foreboding. But visually, West employs the same type of handheld camerawork that has become a hallmark of the episodic web content that I’ve managed to see (admittedly, it’s not very much). I’m sure the budget for this thing was menial to nil, but after watching The House of the Devil, I was hoping that West would apply his boundless cinematic gifts to this miniature form. Perhaps he’s making a commentary on that form by playing within its rules, but I still yearned for a richer, more celluloid-rific palette (much like my wish, while watching Inland Empire, to be back in Mulholland Drive territory). That said, Dead & Lonely remains a notch above the rest not just because West, Reznick, and his actors make the story compelling, but because that story is actually a surprisingly clever metaphor for the dangerous universe that is online dating. Be very careful out there, kiddies!
— Michael Tully
