Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Anna Zlokovic
Starring: Hadley Robinson, Kausar Mohammed, Emily Hampshire, Desmin Borges
One of the more notable shorts featured in US streaming service Hulu's
recent Huluween compilation of brief horror works was writer/director
Anna Zlokovic's Appendage. That short saw Rachel Sennott play a young fashion designer crippled
with self-doubt and anxiety having to face her tough boss, played by the
great Eric Roberts. The young protagonist's fears physically manifest
into an appendage that grows from her abdomen.
Zlokovic has now expanded her short to feature length, though sadly
Sennott and Roberts haven't returned. This time
Hadley Robinson takes the lead role of the stressed out
seamstress, Hannah, with the Roberts role occupied by
Desmin Borges.
The expansion of her short has resulted in Zlokovic delivering
something of a hodge podge of horror sub-genres, with a narrative that
begins in body-horror territory, introduces a
Basket Case style evil twin plotline before going full
Dostoevsky with a double plot and ending up as a
Body Snatchers clone.
As in the original short, Hannah's anxiety leads to a growing lump on
her tummy, which she's shocked to see sprout into a creature that looks
a lot like the infamous lizard baby from '80s sci-fi mini-series
V. The "baby" detaches itself from Hannah's body and continues to mock
her insecurities until she gags it and ties it up in the basement of her
apartment building.
A visit to a doctor leads Hannah down the Google rabbit hole of
researching "Dual DNA syndrome." It seems Hannah had a twin in the womb
that was consumed by her own foetus, and has now manifested itself into
being. Hannah finds a support group for those suffering from DDS and
learns that there are several people facing the same issue. Each of them
similarly has an "appendage" locked away somewhere, which they must keep
alive and sedated with drugs, or else they will perish themselves.
The ensuing story is the classic tale of a mousy protagonist having
their life taken over by a more confident double of themselves, seen in
everything from Dostoevsky's
The Double
to the Michael Cera vehicle Youth in Revolt. Appendage seems unsure whether or not it should play
this scenario for laughs though. Much of the movie plays it
straight, but supporting characters like Borges' over the top fashion
mogul and Kausar Mohammad as Esther, Hannah's sassy Asian friend
(has anyone else noticed how the sassy Black friend trope has recently
been replaced by the sassy Asian friend trope?) pitch the movie into
more obvious comic territory. There are no real laugh out loud moments
however, and we're left to wonder how much more successful the comedy
side of Appendage might have been had Zlokovic retained
the services of Sennott and Roberts.
Thrown into the mix is a subplot about Hannah's unresolved teenage
issues with her mother, which never really goes anywhere. The movie's
self-invented lore of "Appendages" gets a little confusing the more it
unspools. But perhaps the biggest issue with Appendage as
a horror movie is its lack of peril. Aside from Hannah we never get the
sense that anyone is any real danger here, and there are none of the
set-pieces you expect from the genre, not a single onscreen death.
Things pick up a bit with the introduction of Emily Hampshire as
a fellow DDS survivor who gets suspiciously chummy with Hannah, but the
film fails to fully exploit the Schitt's Creek star's
comic talents. Given its central theme, there's a certain irony to a
short film growing into an out of control double of itself.
