"Unique" | Beloved Beast
“Unique.”
“The excessive length of writer-director Jonathan Holbrook’s micro-budget art-horror film “Beloved Beast” is, in a perverse way, its main selling-point. At 90 minutes or less, this movie’s flat acting, choppy conversations, artless cinematography and sub-David Lynch surrealism would be easy to dismiss. But at nearly three hours, “Beloved Beast” becomes an endurance test, forcing viewers to reckon with Holbrook’s — for lack of a better word — vision.
The most original element here involves the uncommon bond between an orphan, Nina (Sanae Loutsis), and a hulking, masked serial killer, Milton (played by Holbrook), who slaughters his way through the community of creeps, crooks and addicts that Nina meets while living with her neglectful Aunt Erma (Joy Yaholkovsky). The movie’s combination of slasher clichés with a whimsical fairy tale tone is fairly unique. But the rest of the picture’s fascination with a violent small town demimonde plays like a community theater production of “Blue Velvet.”