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Lo starts with the main
character, Justin – or, as he’s called throughout; Dinner – performing a ritual
to summon the demon Lo. The scene is framed and scored very seriously, and the
entrance of Lo is plenty dramatic. The creature is first seem crawling out of
the darkness, slowly revealing its form – an ashen gray, hairy beast that is essentially
one large torso with ruined scraps of legs trailing behind, with a small patch
of its skull either missing, or it has a slight touch of harlequin ichthyosis.
It is a frightening moment that lasts for about a minute, and then, with a
cough, all pretense of seriousness is dropped, and the true nature of the film
reveals itself.
The friend that
recommended Lo
to me summarized it thusly, “A guy summons a demon to get back his girlfriend,
and then they dance.” He wasn’t being entirely accurate, but he was honestly
recommending it. While initially billed as a horror movie, Lo is far more of a quirky
comedy. Or, more accurately, it is one part comedy, one part love story, one
part musical, and a few parts community theater. That last bit is not a knock against
it; while you can see various stage productions similar in theme to Lo, most tend to be
lacking in one very important area: the script. The makeup effects also help.
Think of it more as Buff the Vampire Slayer: The Play. While Buffy did take itself
seriously, to an extent, it was always aware of what it was, and used its
premise to make more than a few sly jokes. The same can be said for Lo.
Lo, as
played by Jeremiah Birkett, is all dry humor and sarcasm. Birkett is one of
those ‘that-guy’ actors that has been acting in bit parts for over two decades
- though he is unrecognizable underneath all of the makeup – and his experience
is certainly evident in his timing and delivery. He is one of the reasons why
the film works as well as it does. By contrast, Ward Roberts is less
experienced, and when compared to Birkett, it shows. His delivery isn’t bad,
but it lacks polish. He also looks like the love-child of Bruce Campbell and
Marc Heap, and has more than a few moments where he seems to be channeling both
actors.
The script
does occasionally drop into camp - like the various song and dance numbers and
a first-hand account of the tortures of hell as delivered by a bickering couple
from behind a backlit bed sheet – but those moments are done willfully, usually
as the setup for a joke, or just as the joke itself. Lo, in essence, is a one
room, one act play and writer/director Travis Betz knows it, and uses that to
his advantage. Half of the movie is set on a theater stage – if not all of it -
with stagehands visibly smoking in the background, and occasionally reaching
out to hand off a prop. The bulk of the action takes place on these various
stages, and even the main circle, where protagonist Justin sits for the entire
movie, looks like it is in the middle of a stage. Apparently there is an actual
stage version in the works, which is surprising in that there isn’t already
one. That is also one of the charms of the film; there is no reason for a film
where the protagonist does little more than sit on the floor for the entire
movie to work this well.
There will
undoubtedly be a few people who stumble across this film on Netflix while
looking for a horror fix, and those people will be disappointed. But those that
don’t mind giving the film a brisk 80 minutes will find that there is quite a
bit to recommend. It is no wonder that there seems to be
a growing bunch of devoted followers on the film’s IMDB page.
