Gazer Review: A Hypnotic, Distinct Directorial Debut

One’s tempted to compare Gazer to many of the films it riffs on. For starters, there’s Memento, Christopher Nolan’s breakthrough film about a man unable to form short-term memories and caught up in a seedy criminal underbelly. Ryan J. Sloan’s debut may not feature such a radical structure, but with its gauzy 16mm look and engrossing story, it does something almost as important: announce a distinct directorial vision. 

Ariella Mastroianni (also a co-writer) stars as Frankie, a single mother first seen working the night shift at a gas station. Her unique condition is dyschronometria, a degenerative brain disease that affects her perception of time and––most crucially––causes blackouts. To help center her in the moment, she uses cassette tapes that repeat affirmations and mantras, telling her to rewind if she feels one coming on. In other references, she spends her time at a support group for those whose loved ones died by suicide, and it’s here that she meets the femme fatale as it were: Claire (Renee Gagner). Like many a noir, she seems to be in trouble and offers Frankie a lot of money for a small job: simply break into her apartment, take some keys, and drive a car to the Meadowlands. 

It’s never that easy, and neither is Gazer. Sloan makes smart use of the inherent tension of a woman who can’t always tell how much time is passed, match-cutting from day to night just as both Frankie and we have grown too comfortable. The mere fact that Frankie could zone out at any time is put to full force when she has to hide under a bed in the midst of the break-in, the threat of zoning out heightening an already suspenseful scene. Mastroianni herself is brilliant, an enormously mesmerizing performer who plays Frankie with just the right amount of steely resolve, mixed with a woman close to the edge of a total breakdown. 

A slow-burning paranoia builds, aided by Sloan’s eerie compositions and a dark, jazzy score courtesy of Steve Matthew Carter. Gazer becomes interested in perceptions of things right before you and how you imagine a person to be. It’s telling that one of the most common refrains in Frankie’s tapes is “Focus. What do you see,” a question that grows more complex as the mystery unravels. In such moments, Gazer proves to be not so much the sum of its many parts but its own hypnotic thing, steadily pulling you deeper into its mystery.

Less effective––though well-filmed––are a series of dream sequences that pull in more references from Lynch to Videodrome. These don’t break with the carefully crafted mood so much as they feel slightly crammed in, as if Sloan wanted to get everything he’d thought about doing onscreen. While the film ends on a satisfyingly ambiguous note, it doesn’t quite reach the grand thematic scope of Memento, falling back on summarizing events. Even as it stumbles, Gazer remains nothing less than a wholly unique mood. Perhaps the biggest compliment one would give is that it leaves you clamoring for whatever Sloan and Mastronianni do next.

Gazer opens in theaters on Friday, April 4.

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