THE CRESCENT MM D: Seth A. Smith. Canada. 99 min. Sep 14, 11:59 pm, Ryerson Sep 15, 6 pm, Scotiabank 11. Rating: NN
Nova Scotia filmmaker Smith, who made the unsettling Lowlife a few years back, returns with this bleak psychological thriller about a young artist (Danika Vandersteen) who retreats to a beachside house with her toddler (Woodrow Graves, the real-life son of Smith and producer Nancy Urich) after a tragedy.
Smith establishes an uneasy vibe right away, with hints of a freak-out to come in the occasional trippy footage of the artist paint marbling. But then The Crescent falls into a rut, drifting through long, languid sequences of vague menace and dicey dramatic choices, paying off in one of the year’s least welcome twist endings.
