Crew
Director – Kourtney Roy, Screenplay – Paul Bromley, Story – Paul Bromley & Kourtney Roy, Producers – Josh Huculiak, Amber Ripley & Sophie Venner, Photography – David Bird, Music – Cayne McKenzie, Visual Effects – M2 Media Post (Supervisor – Nikola Panic), Special Effects Supervisor – Tom Blacklock, Makeup Effects – Lindala Schminken FX Inc, Production Design – Cherry Collard. Production Company – Goodbye/Taletime Pictures/Telefilm Canada/IPR.VC/M2 Media Post/Bleat Post Production.
Cast
Chloe Pirrie (Kay Hall/Barb Valentine), Jeff Gladstone (Morgan Valentine), Patti Allan (Sally), Pam Kearns (Stella Northstar), Christina Meredith Lewall (Johnette Delaney), Jason Deline (Caleb), Ali Rusu-Tahir (Sasha), Ryan Beil (Tour Guide)
Plot
Kay Hall joins a tour group through the woods of Krypto Peak in Southwestern British Columbia where cryptid creatures known as the sooka are reputed to roam. She wanders off the trail and seems to encounter one of the creatures. She returns changed, not knowing who she is. As she slots into Kay’s life, she realises that she is Barb Valentine, a cryptozoologist who went missing in the woods while searching for the sooka. She now sets out on a journey to find more about Barb’s mysterious disappearance, but something has changed inside her.
Kryptic was a feature-length debut for Canadian director Kourtney Roy. Roy has a background as a photographer and has held several international exhibitions. She has made three short films throughout the 2010s and broaches her first full-length film here.
Kryptic comes with a sense of mystery. At the outset, we follow Chloe Pirrie as she joins a tour group of the woods on Krypto Peak but then wanders off the trail and experiences ‘something’. It is not clear what but we get glimpses of the sooka, a Bigfoot-like creature, through the trees. Chloe returns to the group where the guide calls off names, having found someone is missing, until she is the only one standing there, not recognising that her name has been called. She returns home but now seems to be inhabiting someone else’s life, puzzling over details such as where Kay lives and what she does for a job. This all creates an undeniably intriguing mystery.
It feels like some kind of baffling Lost Highway (1997)-like identity exchange has gone on. The mystery continues as Chloe Pirrie comes to the realisation that she is the missing woman Barb Valentine. Although here the film left me in some confusion. Chloe Pirrie is playing both Kay and Barb and yet has people recognise her as being either of these people at various points. If there is some kind of Bodyswap gone on as the opening implies, then people would be recognising her as either Kay or Barb but surely not both.
Not long after, Chloe sets out on a quest to find who Barb was. This takes her through assorted encounters, where she sits down to drinks with an aging motelier (Pam Kearns), meets a woman in a bar, is invited to a party where some people recognise her. You are not really sure of the dramatic connections of these scenes – they seem very random and episodic in nature. Chloe also appears to attack some of the people, whereupon we get scenes cutting away to said people writhing as they are enveloped in a mass or tentacles. There is no explanation for what is going on here.
Later Chloe reunites with her husband Jeff Gladstone who is glad to see her and enthusiastically resumes their relationship. She doesn’t say much except to indicate that some of his needy and overly controlling behaviours were the reason that she left in the first place. This feels like it is a section from an entirely different film and comes in out of left field. It gives some explanation to Barb’s disappearance but seems disconnected from the other scenes about the double identity and sooka mystery. It ends with Chloe starting the car and crushing the husband against the garage wall, before driving off. At the end, she places on a red hood and walks into the forest where a portal opens and she vanishes inside.
Scottish actress Chloe Pirrie is someone whose career rise I have watched with interest. Here she has a fragile thinness that makes her seem awkward and alienated. She gives Kryptic an edge where something feels not quite right even as her character remains withdrawn and opaque, saying little. The film itself though is a frustrating one where Kourtney Roy doesn’t seem to know what she wants it to be about and travels a journey of meandering vagueness through a plot that leaves far too much of what is happening unclear.
Trailer here