Review: CANVAS

For decades, America’s duopoly party system has taken turns blaming art on any eventuality that happens in society. Every time there’s a school shooting, heavy metal music is to blame by way of the conservative parties. When racism happens, extreme liberal constituents will blame it TV or film for “not showing everybody”. But, what if art really COULD kill? Welp, that’s the premise behind Ryan Guiterman’s new feature-length midnight thriller CANVAS.

Set in a volatile NYC that later on doesn’t even seem to mind it’s own pending destruction (more on that later), CANVAS follows a demon known as ‘The Painter'(Ell Peck) who is threatening to destroy NYC and the rest of world. To do this, ‘The Painter’ becomes a world-renowned serial killer so much so that America does the per usual and gets the feds involved led by George Rohan(Steve Key) tasked with hunting down the cause of all of these murders and bring them to justice. The Painter needs to kill to create new spawn, and also on the case is journalist Reila Martin (Isabel Ellison) who thinks that the feds are hiding something, and as such, attempts to bring down George in her latest “defund the police” crusade.

The horror feature-length is divided up into a couple of “chapters”, if you will, but rife with a number of aesthetic styles. Most of the film is a rotoscope-animated set against a dank setting which is perfect for an imp hell-bent on killing us all. Even when the camera does far-away shots, the production doesn’t go into too many facial details which helps with the oddity that is the film and is a welcome alternative to other rotoscope productions that forgets it’s an animated medium. Ryan Guiterman is also more-than-willing to deploy found footage/mobile filming techniques to break up the sometimes monotonous overtones that comes with the rotoscope-produced effort which helps the viewer “come up for air” in the rather dark setting, not unlike Alex Proyas’ The Crow or similar techniques seen in The Matrix. 

The cast leaves a lot to be desired. I actually came to appreciate the voice-over coming from the demon because I convinced myself that we were getting the already recorded audio played in reverse or perhaps Latin(which isn’t a friendly spoken language) I came to that conclusion after having attempted to use Google Translate to pick up for Spanish or anything else, to no avail. I kind of enjoy not knowing because that’s usually the joy of good sci-fi. Everyone else’s acting contributions are largely forgettable, and Isabell Ellison’s opening scene features a snot strand that may have just beat out The Blair Witch Project’s Heather Donahue which may be a highlight, but I’m not sure.

The premise of the film isn’t too unheard of, and I would’ve appreciated it more if the dialogue wasn’t the equivalent of flavorless porridge, but because the protagonist made for a solid climax, I was engaged, if not humored by some of the low-budget qualities of film. In fact, near the end, there’s a whole sequence where a monster demon is coming and is clearly destroying NYC only for the populace of downtown not looking the least big concerned about the impending destruction that’s about to take place.

CANVAS sets up for a sequel much in the same way The Quiet Place does, I just hope that if there is a future iteration it’s with a completely different starring cast and someone gives the script to an able-bodied writer that can punch things up.