Before my screening of Kryptic, director Kourtney Roy provided minimal discussion of the film, preferring to avoid providing any preconceived notions about the film itself. In a sense, she elected to avoid giving answers about the film, in hopes that the audience would piece together the film itself. Normally, I like this approach quite a bit; with Kryptic, however, I think this approach was largely emblematic of the film itself:

Roy utilizes a number of symbols within the film. White picket fences, Red Riding Hood coded costuming and bisexual lighting, among others, all appear throughout the film. Kryptic requires an active viewership to really understand what the film is gesticulating towards; however, I wonder if I am doing too much of the work here, and that the film isn’t nearly clear enough in its aims.

What’s fun about Kryptic is the film’s depiction of socialocultural alienation, found through the Alice in Wonderland-esque performance of Chloe Pirrie as Kay, a disaffected veterinarian who gets lost on a group hike. Kay happens to look exactly like Barbara Valentine, a cryptozoologist who disappeared under mysterious circumstances in the exact same woods. Kay begins on a journey to discover what exactly happened to Barb, going so far as to – literally – try and walk a mile in her shoes.

Krytpic has enough going up for it to make its – sometimes frustrating – lack of clarity. The film is about as Canadian as can be, so much so that I half imagine that an update of Katherine Mon’s seminal classic Weird Sex and Snowshoes would include a chapter on Roy’s feature debut. As an intellectual exercise, the film could be quite rewarding. You’d have to put the work in though.