Gravitas Ventures
You don’t necessarily need a huge budget to tell an interesting story or even to have a unique visual style. A lot of indie movies have a similar low key look, and often they have the same sort of style or general idea — let’s follow this particular messed up person as they screw up further and face consequences. It’s far more fun if the movie is faster paced than slower paced, and that’s already an unusual thing for indie movies — immediately it’s the sort of thing that stands out.
The Mimic comes from writer/director Thomas F. Mazziotti and it’s sort of based on something that happened to him, allegedly at least. Thomas Sadoski from The Newsroom plays the lead character who is credited as ‘The Narrator’, and in fact he narrates to us nearly the entire movie. The Narrator is specifically fascinated by the concept of sociopaths, and wonders who might be one in any room — he mentions the commonly believed idea that 1 in 25 people are sociopaths.
His path keeps intersecting with a mysterious young man credited as ‘The Kid’ (Jake Robinson), and eventually they meet and form a weird sort of friendship. But the Narrator asks probing, invasive questions and the Kid seems emotionally disconnected and strangely uncaring about other people. Thus the Narrator suspects this Kid is a sociopath and sets about trying to prove it — but it’s not nearly so simple.
The Kid has a few little storylines of his own, and it’s a bit of the ‘whose story is this anyway?’ going on, as the Narrator is mostly present at least during voice overs. He presents a world where he’s trying to write the story he’s showing us, but there are more layers to it. Eventually the movie breaks the meta-narrative with a very clever scene about the movie itself that I would’ve preferred more of that sort of meta-commentary.
Other characters come in and out of the scene (including some well-known ones like Gina Gershon and Jessica Walter — and Didi Conn!), but it’s ultimately all about the odd relationship that forms between the two men. Is the Kid a sociopath? Is the Narrator? Both, neither, someone else entirely?
The Kid talks a bit about his wife, which the Narrator suddenly focuses on — is this person real or a lie? Is she being manipulated or is it for real? The Kid talks about her in a strange way, but then again, that’s how he talks about everything. All throughout, the two jab at each other in rapid-fire, ‘Sorkin-esque’ dialogue where they talk about everything and nothing all at once.
The movie is rapidly paced and edited, and it speeds along even when you realize basically nothing has happened for quite a few scenes. A lot of it is sort of a story about the nature of empathy toward strangers and the inscrutable way some people are drawn to each other. It’s not really the sort of movie I can easily just recommend to most people, it’s a bit too odd and dialogue heavy for that. It’s ‘quirky’ in a way, but it’s never annoying, just sometimes a bit long in the tooth. I think the director has a pretty good sense of how to write dialogue and has some interesting ideas, but I also think what I really want to see is something even weirder — embrace the meta narrative entirely and truly try to confuse the audience. Or try anyway, I’d respect that if there’s actually something there to say.
Planning to see The Mimic? Click below to see the movie, and be sure to come back and tell us what you thought!
The Mimic has a run time of 1 hour 21 minutes and is not rated.
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