Drama reaches hysterical heights

Rating: 1/10 (23 September 2014)

Before Darren Arnofsky found his footing as a strong director, namely Pi, but especially Requiem for a Dream felt like film school exercises. Whatever little substance there might be is crushed under the weight of a director who throws split screens, frame rate effects, cameras mounted to the actors, fisheye lenses inches away from faces and an endless grab bag of visual gimmicks that sits uncomfortably between amateurish and pretentious. The director is the star here and the film suffers from it. The characters are about as fleshed out as your standard uninteresting junkie usually is and while Ellen Burstyn gives a decent performance with this material, her downward trajectory as a diet pill popping old lady who wants to be on television - is so over the top that it becomes almost comedic. The characters are never engaging and watching these cardboard cutouts on a hardcore afterschool special path of self destruction, is no more substantive than watching a young director play in a new sandbox with all the split screens and gimmicks at his disposal.