Here is a deeply strange but diverting indie experiment: a docu-fictional meditation on the nature of grief from director Courtney Stephens and her co-writer and lead performer Callie Hernandez. Hernandez plays Carrie, a version of herself, opposite deadpan cameos from various microbudget directors.<\/p>\n
In the fictional part of the film, Carrie\u2019s father has died; he was a quack doctor who attempted to market an alternative healing machine as part of a pyramid-selling scam, but who also had many friends and followers who were bowled over by his charm. The lawyer executing his will tells Carrie there won\u2019t be any money left after all her dad\u2019s debts are paid, but she does inherit the rights to the healing machine, and there is even a prototype in a safety deposit box for her to try out.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Over and above this, there is a factual level to the film: Hernandez\u2019s real-life father, Dr John Hernandez, was in actuality an alternative medicine evangelist who achieved a certain amount of fame on local TV. Does Carrie in her grief \u2013 or Hernandez in hers \u2013 want to somehow overturn her natural suspicion about her dad\u2019s apparent delusions or even charlatanism? Is this film the way to do it? A way to keep faith with her grief by somehow believing her dad\u2019s views?<\/p>\n
Carrie\u2019s various conversations with people connected to her father are quietly bizarre. Film director Joe Swanberg<\/a> plays an engineer who had a contract to manufacture the machine; film-maker James N Kienitz Wilkins plays the lawyer, while a dope-smoking enthusiast who wants to buy the patent off Carrie is played by cult writer Caveh Zahedi, creator of YouTube series The Show About the Show.<\/p>\n