The Show Review

The latest game news from IGN - one of my fave channels ever - check it out IGN serves a global audience, so with The Show screening at the Sitges Film Festival, we are publishing our review from Kristy Puchko who watched the movie via a digital screener. Read more on IGN's policy on movie reviews in light of COVID-19 here. IGN strongly encourages anyone considering going to a movie theater during the COVID-19 pandemic to check their local public health and safety guidelines before buying a ticket. [poilib element="accentDivider"] English comics author Alan Moore has brought us Watchmen, V for Vendetta, From Hell, and Batman: The Killing Joke, all of which have resulted in dark film adaptations. Now, the man behind twisted tales of seething vigilantes, eccentric killers, and obsessive detectives gives us The Show, which offers such a dizzying mystery that you might feel your brain is melting. Whether that's a good thing - your mileage may vary. Written by Moore, The Show begins by pitching us cold into the mission of a mysterious man (Tom Burke) in search of a vicious jewelry thief (Darrell D'Silva). The peculiar protagonist gives various names: Bob Mitchum, Steve Lipman, and Fletcher Dennis. He alternately claims to be an antique dealer, a concerned sibling, and a detective in search of a dangerous criminal. His identity is just the first mystery introduced here. Those that follow will include an inconvenient death, a curious coma dream, a long-dead comedy duo, and a decades-old cold case. With a razor-sharp intellect and an instinct for how to handle colorful characters, our hero -- who we'll call Dennis for ease -- makes short work of uncovering one stirring secret after another. Yet he underestimates the deeply rooted strangeness of the little English town into which he's stumbled. The investigation at the core of Moore's screenplay is fascinating, yet feels like a tool to allow for exploration of the phantasmagorical playground that is his Northampton netherworld. It is a place overflowing with outrageous characters, quirky locations, and sinister secrets. Seeking the silver-haired thief, Dennis comes across a stud drug dealer (Sheila Atim) who uses voodoo as a marketing tool, a flamboyant front-man (Eric Lampaert) who wears a Hitler mustache on stage, an erotic-asphyxiation enthusiastic (Siobhan Hewlett) with a ravenous need to make sense of mystery, and a pair of pint-sized private eyes (Oaklee Pendergast and Ethan Rouse) who crack cases before bedtime and demand payment in energy drinks. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/the-show-official-trailer"] Around them, Northampton is a visual feast of blight, back alleys, and bonkers billboards. A cramped library brandishes a sign that reads, "That'll lern yer…" A car's bumper sticker proclaims, "I break for poignant moments," and an ad on the side of a building boasts in big bold letters: "Escapism: more fun than a box of spiders!" Director Mitch Jenkins, who previously collaborated with Moore on the 2014 prequel Show Pieces, runs with the surreal tone of this story, offering a production design that bleeds with violent hues and is so rich in details you might wish the plot would slow down so you could sit and take it all in. Every inch of the frame seems relentlessly stuffed with details, like Terry Gilliam's neon-colored dystopian drama The Zero Theorem. In both, the overwhelming visual clutter is part of the message, a bombastic criticism of a world gone mad. The Show packs in visual flourishes with an oddball subplot about a masked superhero alongside a mystery of murder, mayhem, and the damned. Likewise, it is stuffed with dialogue. Moore's script delivers an all-you-can-eat buffet of half-snatched conversations, from cab drivers, bar patrons, landlords, and hospital staff. As Dennis seeks answers, he's caught up in musings on everything from near-death experiences, vampire names, and veganism, to the connection between art and magic. Bringing this weird world to life is a cast that gamely embraces the dreamlike vision Moore and Jenkins establish in script and style. With an expressive eye and otherwise restrained expression, Burke plays a detective that feels like a mix between Humphrey Bogart and art-house Robert Pattinson. Centered around such an enigmatic figure, the movie feels a bit emotionally anemic. However, Hewlett arises as his Girl Friday, offering the rapid-fire delivery of a fast-talking dame with a vulnerable dose of understandable bewilderment. Christopher Fairbank pops up to spit F-bombs and savage villainy with a dark relish, while Atim offers an eerie cool and smoky sensuality as the high priestess of the party drug scene. Young Pendergast score laughs as his child-detective narrates aloud as if in a black-and-white noir, "He was as inconspicuous as a werewolf at a christening." Then, as icing on a cake of too-muchness, Moore himself appears as a literally moon-faced menace, who speaks in riddles and occasionally croons. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=alan-moores-the-show&captions=true"]

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