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Fabled

2004, Movie, R, 84 mins

Fabled: Review

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A stylish but unsatisfying psychological thriller about a hard-drinking, casual-drugging office drone who's either coming undone or under attack by unseen tormentors out to punish him for something. The film's tone is established by a little girl's voice reciting a fairy tale about the battle of wits between the devious crow Ravetti and the wolf Lupold, whose good intentions are at war with his feral nature. Joseph Fable (Desmond Askew) is going through an extended rough patch: His girlfriend, Liz (Katheryn Winnick), left him and he's sure she was having an affair with her shrink, Dr. Frumkes (Michael Panes), while they were still officially a couple. His dog has run away and he's haunted by some very bad thing of which he and his partner in crime, Alex (J. Richey Nash), speak only in the most roundabout, evasive terms. Fable is becoming increasingly convinced that his coworkers are ganging up against him and that someone — or worse, something — is stalking him. His psychiatrist gently suggests that people who think they're being followed often also have guilty consciences, and that Fable's heavy use of alcohol and drugs may play some part in his increasing paranoia. But since Fable has never bothered to find a new doctor, instead going to Dr. Frumkes — hardly a healthy situation, given his suspicions about Frumkes and Liz — he has little faith in the doctor's professional opinion. And as every naturally suspicious person knows, just because you're paranoid doesn't necessarily mean no one's conspiring against you. First-time writer-director-editor Ari Kirschenbaum is talented and ambitious; despite a clearly limited budget, he and cinematographer Yaron Orbach effectively alternate harsh, fluorescent-lit everyday scenes with richly colored, nightmarish images dappled with ominous shadows, and Jack Lingo and Simple Simon's bass-heavy, electronica-inflected score is darkly spooky. The fairy-tale voice-over is a serious misstep; the correlation between the fable and Fable's disintegration isn't apparent until the end, by which time little Della Askew's childish piping has become so grating that many viewers will have tuned it out. The murkily revealed final twist is probably more effective if you haven't seen Brad Anderson's similarly themed THE MACHINIST (2004), which was made after FABLED but released first. leave a comment --Maitland McDonagh
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