#mickey reece

The Power of the Dog (12/1)

Wolf (12/3)

Agnes (12/10)

The Tragedy of Macbeth (12/24)

Cyrano (12/31)

I didn't originally intend to write about this movie—and I'll be brief—but it's been rattling around in my head longer than I expected it to. Writer-Director Mickey Reece has been cranking out two or three movies a year since 2008, and when I saw his vampire drama CLIMATE OF THE HUNTER, I felt like it was the kind of movie that thinks sarcasm is an emotion. So, I cringed a little when I realized I had blindly picked up a ticket to his new picture at the Nightstream festival. It would have been my own fault for slavishly watching all forms of religious horror, but I was pleasantly surprised. What begins as a run of the mill exorcism outing—a disgraced priest (Ben Hall) arrives at a sterile convent to perform the rite for helpless young Sister Agnes—twists and turns into a drama about the lasting impact of this traumatic event on bystander Sister Mary (Molly Quinn). AGNES intuitively feels its way through a meditation on the ways in which religion tries, and often fails, to slake the human craving for connection, and the results are provocative. During the Q&A portion of this screening, when asked about the movie's shifting trajectory, writer-director Mickey Reece remarked that at a certain point in the process, the movie "starts to write itself," and it's easy to see how that happened here. I didn't think this was going to be "for me", but I won't forget about it soon.

A nun’s disturbing behavior sparks rumors of demonic possession at a remote convent.