Low-budget local horror, Icelandic weirdness, surveillance dystopia and a must-see documentary – reviewed.
More NZIFF 2025 reviews: part one, part two, part three.
Happyend
Happyend is billed as a dystopia, but it feels distressingly close to the present. It’s the story of five teenagers, a few weeks away from their high school graduation and all the freedom it represents. It’s a great time in life to sneak into clubs, fall asleep at dawn and play pranks on the school headmaster. But the headmaster thinks that having his sports car upended is in fact an act of terrorism: he responds by purchasing some commercial software which tracks all students with cameras, issuing demerit points if anyone misbehaves. Meanwhile, in the world outside the school, there’s a threat of a major earthquake, and the government assuming emergency powers which would let it target non-ethnically Japanese people because of the supposed risk they pose to social harmony.
This mix between the political and the interpersonal plays out with Yuta and Kou, part of the gang which moved the car in the first place. Yuta just wants to make music; Kou, Korean and a non-Japanese citizen, feels the tug towards political action, taking a stand. And the whole film is riddled with surveillance: if it’s not the cameras watching the students, it’s students watching each other, white uniform shirts flying through the night. The whole thing is beautifully shot, grey concrete in warm tones. I wouldn’t have minded director Neo Sora leaning more into dystopic elements, and the final stand-off with the principal is a little clumsy in its execution. Overall, though, Happyend manages to balance being a touching drama about teenagers with greater questions of surveillance, authority, and emergency. / Shanti Mathias
The Weed Eaters
After huge premieres in Auckland and Wellington, the anticipation was through the roof when Paul Kean, star of The Weed Eaters and also the father of its co-creator Annabel, introduced this scrappy stoner splatter film to Christchurch last week. Made by four pals on an entirely self-funded microbudget of just $19,000, early reviews of the film were throwing out phrases like “cult classic” and comparisons to early Peter Jackson. I am delighted, relieved and only slightly nauseous in confirming that the hype is real. The script is unbelievably crack-up, the characters feel like real people you might have found yourself trapped at New Year’s with once upon a time, and the story spills forth in surprising, sick and satisfying ways. Also shout out to the outstanding local soundtrack, and the best delivery of the word “bouldering” I expect to hear in this lifetime, or any lifetime. / Alex Casey
The Love That Remains
The Love That Remains is about Magnús and Anna, a couple who have separated – well, sort of. Magnús works on a fishing boat, way out in the North Atlantic, and Anna is an artist making large scale work with fabric and metal. It reminded me of Kelly Reichardt’s Showing Up at times, in how the art of it all intersects with the mundanity of dishes and interpersonal relationships. Unlike Reichardt, though, director Hlynur Pálmason leans heavily into the weirdness. Anna, after negotiating with Magnús that he has to leave, seems to topple onto the floor. A child is shot by an arrow. A plane flies into a flock of geese and crashes. Magnús is attacked by a giant version of a rooster he killed, then floats on the ocean in a drysuit, waiting for rescue. This is supposed to suggest something about the strangeness of love which has been dissolved, needing to form into a new relationship. The blurring reality didn’t really work for me, but I loved the tender sequences of the landscape (mushrooms and berries, tides and ice), and the process shots of wriggling fish and hanging canvases. Pálmason seems to suggest that the land is ripe with human opportunities to interrupt natural processes, for good and bad – and that love, like Iceland, has seasons too. / SM
Mistress Dispeller
Consider me aghast, akimbo and still golf clapping in the aftermath of this breathtakingly intimate documentary. Directed by Elizabeth Lo, Mistress Dispeller explores a growing phenomenon in China: professionals hired to go incognito and mend relationships ruptured by infidelity. This is the job of Wang Zhenxi, who is approached by Mrs Li with suspicions about her husband. What transpires is a staggering yet deeply compassionate journey as Zhenxi gets to work infiltrating their lives, and gently solving their relationship problems. Packed with fascinating insights about relationships and dating in the modern world, Mistress Dispeller takes the access and rawness of Couples Therapy and pulls back the curtain ever further than you thought possible. The one thing everyone was talking about as the credits rolled was how the hell Lo managed to get all parties to agree to be filmed throughout the entire process – mistress included. A must-see. / AC
