Any movie that kicks off with a warning to epileptics — high strobe content ahead! — is gonna attract a certain lurid interest. Adam Wingard’s Pop Skull follows a small-town drug addict (co-writer Lane Hughes) as he lurches from hallucination to barely-tolerable reality; his flash-happy mind often seems garbled from the ghosts of experimental films past. The film’s jarring sound design, in particular, owes a lot to the avant-garde. Disturbing imagery and a sense that the things we’re seeing may or (more likely) may not really be happening to our scruffy hero adds to the film’s overall sense of creepy unsettlement. I watched it on DVD in my living room and it made me jumpy — catch it tonight at the Roxie and the effect will no doubt be amplified to freakish degrees. And yeah, that’s a recommendation.
Pop Skull screens tonight, 9:30pm, at the Roxie. Visit the IndieFest web site for more info.