Ambitious amateur physicist makes big promises to desperate cancer patient in Calvin Lee Reeder’s The A-Frame. Known for lo-fi avant garde nightmare features The Oregonian and The Rambler, Reeder takes a more linear storytelling style with this film, offering up a pitch-black science fiction comedy with heart (and blood).
Donna (Dana Namerode) is at her wits end. Recently diagnosed with an aggressive bone cancer that could put her into an amputation which would end her burgeoning music career, she is desperate for another answer. Sitting in the waiting room of her oncologist’s office she is approached by basement physicist Sam (Johnny Whitworth) with a tantalizing offer, take part in a revolutionary experiment and maybe she can keep her hand and her life, she just has to trust him.
The procedure involves subatomic particle displacement. Basically sending it to another dimension and bringing it back whole but this time, no cancer. It’s out there, but it ain’t like we haven’t seen something similar before in Cronenberg’s The Fly or even Mike TV from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (which gets namechecked here). Having lost faith in her doctors’ ability to come up with anything other than lop off the limbs, she goes for it and it works, but not quite exactly.
A cancer support group comes in at various points throughout the plot as well; and they seem to be about accepting their fate. Linda (Laketa Caston), the leader of said group even seems to admonish Donna over accidentally offering hope to others when all other patients’ scans are coming back clean after their first procedures.
Like most of Reeder’s works The A Frame uses deep dark absurdist humor to hit on some bigger ideas. Another patient/potential standup comedian named Rishi (Nik Dodani) uses his jokes as a cudgel against the increasing bad news about his own leukemia; he uses his mic on stage to elicit pity-laughs at half-lame jokes as a way of distracting himself from the pain he should be feeling. As his disease advances, Donna invites Rishi to join her in the miracle cure, but his results are less successful.
The relatively small cast plays well against each other, Donna’s desperation bounces off Sam’s aloof confidence in his ability to cure everything, while Rishi and Linda act as counterweights to the weightiness of the main themes. A warning against buying into snake oil salesmen unthinkingly. And though these procedures are indeed revolutionary, they do not pan out quite so conveniently as Sam had hoped when taken to their intended ends leading to some very messy aftermaths.
A body horror film disguised as a black comedy, The A-Frame is definitely Calvin Lee Reeder’s most accessible feature yet and those familiar with his short films will see an evolution of his unique visual and narrative style here. Funny without being funny ha-ha, gross in a way that’ll have gorehounds cackling, cleverly written with a homespun vibe that makes us care about these regular folks characters it’s a humdinger of a movie that should finally get Reeder the bigger audience he has always deserved.
Watch The A-Frame For Free On Putlocker.