My Review Of “My Pure Joy”

James Cullen Bressack’s “My Pure Joy” a psychological horror film that shows the steady breakdown of one teenager’s sanity. His unguided and frustrated life collapses into a downward spiral of dark psychosis which manifest in fits of homicidal reaction to the world around him. The film is about a boy named Adam who appears to be a normal slacking teenager, but underneath...his mind has been so rotted by trauma from his past and the gory films he watches, that he has blurred the lines between reality and pretend! This prompts Adam to start killing people in similar ways to films he watches, making sure to put his own little spin on it. It stars Alexei Ryan, Lisa Frantz, Cory Jacob, Laura Meadows, Jon Bloch, JD Fairman, Chris Chandler, Mark Glasser, Kevin Flood, Phillip Andrew Christopher, Emily Bordignon, Bailey Gaddis and Kimberly Night.
This film is a low budget blend between the artist interpretation of extreme psychosis and the raw grittiness of torture-slasher stylization which comes off as a very intense blend of grindcore and a coming-of-age thriller. There are moments that have an almost real presence of dark melodrama and expressionistic noir. It is dark and graphic which feel a lot like watching the gory aftermath of a horrible tragedy unfold before your eyes. It feels like true horror as it addresses the loss of innocence and disillusionment of youth on the outside looking into a world they don’t understand and doesn’t understand them. Exposing the distance that is often present between the broken mind and the society that raises them or actually the lack of actually being raised. Combined with an obsessive grip to horror films which connect him to the psychological ties between a dying father and a past of tragic abandonment this story sheds a shadowy light on some very real issues in todays family dynamic.
“My Pure Joy” is a raw and gritty nightmare that pulls at your psyche the way fears torment the mental. It has an almost home movie feel that plays with the snuff exploitation atmosphere in a very in-your-face bluntness. Dark, edgy and intense. Yet there is a very passionate artistic approach to the tragic tale that shows a sense of compassion for the short coming in a young persons life that could lead them down a sinister path such as the one Bressack exposes in this film. It is graphic and raw so it may not appeal to everyone. I like abrasive and gritty indie and low budget films mostly because they do take on the more unadulterated expression of horror without the fantastical disconnect that a lot of films with a wider audience reach tend to show. “My Pure Joy” is disturbing and twisted psychotic ballet filled with visual displays of terror. A cool urban nightmare that is classic Bressack.
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