It is a very real and very sweet moment of friendship, right smack in the middle of a movie about losing your soul. Sean's cousin builds up the courage to eat the cat food, big talk and bravado the whole time, while Sean refuses to let him back down. Instead of a gross out scene, something played for broad laughs, what follows is restrained and understated. 'you dare me?' his cousin is incredulous. There is a brief pause and then, 'I dare you.' Arms crossed. 'Go on ahead and eat it,' Sean says then. White tuna in this bitch, dog, are you trippin?' his cousin says, 'This is the shit man if Cas don't like this shit I'll eat it.'Īnd with zero hesitation, Sean responds, 'Really?' His cousin gets up, very casually, and takes a look at the offered can. 'I specifically put CURRY brand.' Sean says. His cousin has brought the wrong cat food. 'Mh hmm! Mh hmm! Dollar store always got that cute shit!') When they get to the cat food, Sean blows up. Sean goes over the grocery list, item by item, anxious and angry, demanding to know where each missing thing is, dismissing the items he does find. Teases him gently, though, and who is there because taking care of your family is what you do.

A tense failed ritual is interrupted by a visit from Sean's cousin who regularly brings our main character supplies, who teases him for being quite obviously around the bend. We piece it together.Īs the film progresses, the experiments escalate, veering further from science and dangerously close to dark-magic. Nothing is is outright explained, but everything is there to be understood. There's something exciting and rare about a movie that trusts its audience, trusts its actors, trusts itself.

We hear the threats he hollers at something in the lake, standing in the boat and dropping heavy stones to deliver his words down into the water. We hear the promises he makes his cat about a mansion they'll share, full of doritos. From the film's title we suspect he's trying to make gold out here in a cramped trailer deep in the woods. The horror of The Alchemist Cookbook works because it’s so benign in its own way. What Potrykus is getting at ties in pretty closely with the loner aesthetic that book helped establish back in the day. We see burners, smoke, an old tape-deck, chemical reactions. Of course it’s no coincidence that the title of this film so closely apes The Anarchist Cookbook. We watch him saw the copper-top off a battery, dripping its innards into a test tube. So much of this feeling is sustained by the film's complete confidence in Ty Hickson's now-careful and now-unhinged performance as Sean, our back-woods science/dark-magic obsessive. Words aren't missing from the scenes, they were never meant to be there. That feeling of 'when are they gonna talk?' impatience never develops. That wordlessness becomes almost electric, wrapped in the sound of machinery operating, the sawing and clink of science apparatus, and dark, funny music from Detroit's underground music scene. The Alchemist Cookbook (2016) is structured around long, largely wordless sections.

The alchemist cookbook film