Psychotropica

Released by: Static Omega Film Productions
Released in: 2009
Director: Damien Sage
Cast: Damien Sage, Braden West, Tiffany Titmouse, Kurtwood Jones, Maximillian Magick
Year: 2009
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The Movie:

Damien Sage's Psychotropica is a tough film to categorize. It's an independent low budget feature that seems to fit nicely into the revenge thriller genre until you realize that the whole thing has been rotoscoped and that it looks like a cartoon. But it's not really a cartoon. But it's not really a live action movie. Rather, it's… weird.

The movie tells the story of a man known simply as The Patient (played by director Sage himself) who, when we meet him, is stuck inside the confines of a dreary mental hospital sometime in the presumably not too distant future. Another man with a mysterious moniker and known as The Doctor (Maximillian Magick) is interviewing The Patient, intent on basically spelunking his way through his psyche and his memories in order to find out what caused him to snap. The deeper The Doctor probes The Patient and forces him to relive his memories, the more unsettling these memories become.

There's more to this than just a medical practitioner upholding the Hippocratic Oath, in fact, The Doctor, who is seemingly torturing the man he's in charge of helping, is testing a new mind altering drug on him called, you guessed it, Psychotropica. Nothing goes as planned, of course, and as The Patient starts reliving more and more of his memories he's able to put together the puzzle pieces of his past and figure out a few things on his own…

Entirely unique in its look and tone, Psychotropica is a pretty wild trip of a film. Sage paces the movie well and while there are times where the Rotoscoping effects do overshadow the subtleties of the narrative, generally in the context of the story it works quite well. As The Patient goes through what he goes through, on a visual level we're taken along for the ride. It's an interesting idea and one which the film exploits quite effectively even if there are a couple of spots where maybe it's a little too much.

These effects also help give the film a more impressive scope. There aren't any cheap looking sets or ineffective locations here, because they've all been worked over to the point where the film almost looks like it is taking place in an alternate reality. This is clever filmmaking in the sense that it allows a crew who were obviously working without the benefits that a larger budget would provide. Complimenting the visuals is a very effective score that runs the gamut from the tripped out electronic you'd expect to hear in a movie like this and some more epic, almost orchestral sounding pieces which vary from scene to scene.

Psychotropica isn't without its flaws. As said, sometimes the effects seem a bit much and not every performance is as strong as the two leads (both of whom are surprisingly good here) but for a micro budgeted feature it's quite a pleasant surprise. It tells a good story in an interesting way and wraps it all up in a package that looks and sounds impressive enough that you can definitely see the potential that Sage and company have obviously got.

Video/Audio/Extras:

The 1.78.1 anamorphic widescreen transfer looks about as good as the filmmakers probably wanted it to. As mentioned, the image has been manipulated to the point where this almost looks like animation rather than live action but obviously this is intentional. There aren't any compression artifacts to complain about and the disc is well authored.

A bit of mild distortion is evident in the English language Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo track on this DVD, but aside from that it doesn't sound bad. The dialogue is always clear and more often than not the levels are well balanced. Is it perfect? Nope. But it sounds okay.

There are a few extra features on this disc aside from the trailer for the feature and the standard menus you've come to expect from DVDs. First up is a bit containing some promotional artwork but there's also a feature here that shows how some of the sound recording was done for the movie. Aside from that, there's also some animation test material here.

The Final Word:

Psychotropica is a pretty interesting work of near-surrealism that moves at a good pace and which exceeds its budgetary constraints by combining some decent acting with some really and truly creative filmmaking. While it's definitely on the odd side of the spectrum, fans of quirky low budget filmmaking should give this one a look.