TURN ME ON
(Check out Chris Reed’s Turn Me On movie review. Director Michael Tyburski is a former HtN Short Film Contest winner and the film is now available to stream on Apple TV, Amazon and Fandango at Home. Seen it? Join the conversation with HtN on our Letterboxd Page.)
Working off a script by Angela Bourassa (If You Were the Last), director Michael Tyburski (The Sound of Silence) creates, in Turn Me On, a dystopian vision of a soulless future firmly rooted in the past. What makes the nightmare especially chilling is that everyone appears to have chosen it for themselves. A cult, no matter how controlling, will always find followers. There’s something within our species that draws some people to the worst version of humanity.
The production design, courtesy of Annie Simeone (Judy Blume Forever) and her team—and beautifully shot by cinematographer Matt Mitchell (Little Woods)—contributes to the simultaneously antiseptic and calming (or perhaps mind-numbing) aesthetic of the community on display. Known as “Our Friends,” this strange colony is filled with a population rendered passive by a daily dose of drugs. Each day dawns the same, without passion.
Bel Powley (Wilding) stars as the appropriately (or not) named Joy, who shares an apartment with her ostensible romantic partner, William (Nick Robinson, Silk Road). They have nothing in common beyond narcotic somnambulance. When not working at their mundane jobs, they awkwardly socialize with two other couples: Samantha (Nesta Cooper, Cold Copy) and Christopher (Justin H. Min, Shortcomings), and Michelle (Julia Shiplett, Happiness for Beginners) and Frank (Griffin Newman, of the podcast Blank Check). When Joy is given a cancer diagnosis and told that she will need to go off her medications for one day, everything changes.
Slowly, at first, then more quickly, Joy’s senses blossoms and, wanting others with whom to share the experience, she encourages Nick and then the other couples to drop the pills, too. Soon, their sexual impulses return, to gloriously mess results. Their previously formal “Are you content?” questions lose all meaning. Whether they are now content or not, they are most definitely alive. Complications ensue.
There remains a mystery, throughout, which is the why of all of it. Then again, is it all that different from various religions of our real world? When existence becomes overwhelming, there is a tendency to retreat. Regrets come later.
When one of the characters is offered a chance to become a “friend” (the unmedicated ruling elite), we discover that much of the universe is based on old Hollywood movies, 1950s educational films, and newsreels. Though the residents of the place may be ethnically diverse, the powers that be push a conformity where choices are simple because they do not exist. If there’s a more sinister agenda, it remains more obscure, though sameness is frightening enough.
Turn Me On intrigues, even as it keeps the viewer at a distance (though thematically, such a remove makes sense). Our capacity for love and empathy is what ultimately triumphs. There’s hope for us yet.
– Christopher Llewellyn Reed (@ChrisReedFilm)
Vertical Entertainment; Superboys of Malegaon; Michael Tyburski
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