Exceptions

Mike Storch has done interesting movies before, couched in that deliciously dark, ironic style of his, but until Exceptions, never one that genuinely affected me. "Interesting" always seemed like a dubious compliment to describe a film: Something can be interesting but not good, or not effective, or not memorable, and I know of several interesting movies that had little lasting impact. Storch found a formula that ensures all his films are interesting. He plays his cards close to the vest for 95% of the runtime, and then reveals them casually at the end, changing the landscape of what we have seen. Sometimes it isn't actually a reveal but just another step forward, like Gnomes. Sometimes it is a reveal, but it reveals a "what" and not a "why," like Missing. Sometimes the reveal is too extreme and comes off as overdone, like HAIL TO THE CHIEF or Maybe Next Year. In Exceptions, it is a reveal that gives us both what, and why, and injects a wealth of depth and possibilities into the story.

A man walks down an industrial corridor and sits down at a control panel to do his job. A friend asks him how he's been as they set to work -- the film is their conversation, exploring their problems and debating the bigger picture of what life is. Every few sentences is punctuated by a loud klaxon and a flashing light that reads "READY". Part of it is knowing the director's history and part of it is the piercing sound of that alarm at regular intervals, but Exceptions is downright uncomfortable in a way that none of Storch's horror movies have managed. The conversation is as congenial as such conversations go, the two men talking about optimism, family, and the greater good, and yet that series of sound effects -- alarm, click, whirring of turbines -- keeps cutting in at such precise intervals. Something is obviously being juxtaposed against the content of the discussion, and yet it isn't so obvious. Mike plays his cards especially close to the vest this time around, and the atmosphere of the conversation is so breezy and amiable it ends up being even more uncomfortable than the most unstable characters in 3DMM movies. Where most directors strain for tension, Storch achieves it by not trying, and the effect is gnawing and powerful.

I have a few issues with the construction. It's obvious the movie was done with a minimum of scenery detail, and due to the black-and-white format and obscuring angles, it works. The film is comfortable in keeping to a very limited amount of information without us feeling boxed in. The details in the control room look great, and certainly the big reveal is effective, but he could have taken it just a small step further. The establishing scenes with the first man walking through the corridor are competent, but imagine how powerful they could have been with just a few more angles and details off to the side. And Storch has given up a wonderful opportunity to raise the tension another notch by giving the two men edited costumes -- something about that fish on Billy's shirt has a way of removing the punch from a given shot or line delivery. And the final shots could have been truly brutal, but again he sticks with 3DMM's basics and no actor editing.

For the most part, Exceptions is powerful enough that these aren't serious flaws, but the minimalist production is visible in the finished product, rarely a good thing for a movie. There's also something here that gets me in seemingly every Mike Storch movie, which is an obvious missed opportunity in the ending. Like the short line he cut out of No Room or the interesting-but-not-illuminating final shots in Missing or Gnomes, he does it again by not setting off the alarm and "READY" light one last time. There were two great opportunities for it, either right on the last shot or at the tail end of the credits, but it never comes. Ah well. The story is still as solid as anything Storch has ever done, probably moreso. He's made a 40-minute horror epic and a 10-minute De La Hoz-scripted thriller, but I'd have to say this is his best work to date.

Critical Score: 93/100.
Personal Score: 95/100.