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Movie Review: 'Los Angeles Overnight'

Unique 'Los Angeles Overnight' worked for me, may not work for everyone.

By Sean PatrickPublished 6 years ago 3 min read
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Los Angeles Overnight takes a familiar plot and dresses it up with some satisfying weirdness and one terrific lead performance. Arielle Brachfield plays Priscilla, a wannabe actress struggling to stay afloat in Los Angeles. Director Michael Chrisoulakis uses image and dialogue to keep audiences off balance, even as the story has the conventional trappings of a thriller.

Los Angeles Overnight begins strangely with a trippy voiceover from none other than legendary director and personality Peter Bogdanovich. Bogdanovich is playing the hypnotherapist to Brachfield’s lead actress, Priscilla, who is trying to quit smoking. More importantly, she’s building confidence via the power of suggestion in hopes of manifesting that confidence in her work.

Bogdanovich provides voiceover for the entire movie in the style of hypnotherapy sessions and his voice is part of the film’s eerie atmosphere. At times the commentary has little to do with the story unfolding but it does break the monotony of what is essentially, as I said earlier, a straight thriller plot. Bogdanovich has this odd charisma that makes some of the nonsense dialogue fascinating, even enthralling.

Trippy visuals, a spooky and quite good score, and some oddball dialogue are all employed to by director Chrisoulakis in a manner that allows him to tell a conventional noir crime drama in a fashion beyond typical movie presentation. A character played by the wonderful Lin Shaye is played in the manner of a plot device but her nonsense dialogue ends up paying off in, at the very least, moving the plot along in a fashion just off kilter.

Remove the odd touches and the plot of Los Angeles Overnight reads very simply: struggling actress takes turn into criminal underworld to maintain dreams of Hollywood stardom. Priscilla overhears Shaye’s nutjob spouting gibberish that turns out to be about stolen money. Priscilla dupes a mechanic boytoy into helping her steal said ill-gotten gains for herself, and criminals plot a path of revenge and recovery.

The plot is familiar but the artful touches, part David Lynch, part film school pretense, elevates the material. I especially enjoyed one of the most unique foot chases I have seen in any movie. As the mechanic runs from one of the criminal henchman, quite literally running, the chase goes on and on like a literal running gag. The streets of this Los Angeles neighborhood are a rather wonderful maze and the detail about the dangers of smoking is unexpected.

Arielle Brachfield is an actress I am not at all familiar with but boy is she entertaining here. Prior to this, her biggest credit appears to be something called Snake Outta Compton, a sub-SyFy Channel B-Movie. I’m sure she’s quite better than that material based on her nuanced turn in Los Angeles Overnight. Brachfield’s large expressive eyes are the best special effect in the movie and are well deployed.

I especially enjoyed the ending of Los Angeles Overnight which takes a very dark turn. I would have preferred the film go deeper down the dark rabbit hole of Priscilla’s criminal ambition but what we get is still quite intriguing. Priscilla’s arc is unique and the subtle ways in which Brachfield evolves Priscilla as a character are very entertaining and easily my favorite part of Los Angeles Overnight.

I could write the movie off as pretentious and criticize it for using film school tricks and Lynchian homage to cover up its conventionality. But I honestly found those supposedly pretentious touches to be entertaining, a lovely dressing up of a thriller plot that worked because the character of Priscilla is so well played. These arty touches may not work for all audiences but they worked for me.

Los Angeles Overnight is available now on most On-Demand services and in what remains of the videostore industry.

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About the Creator

Sean Patrick

Hello, my name is Sean Patrick He/Him, and I am a film critic and podcast host for the I Hate Critics Movie Review Podcast I am a voting member of the Critics Choice Association, the group behind the annual Critics Choice Awards.

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