Saw In Fabric, a strange, somewhat funny horror film about an evil red dress that brings disaster to the people who wear it. The film includes great sequences and deep weirdness, but also a hefty dose of the absurd. It's an interesting film, but sort of a curiosity - more camp than bravura.
The film is not set in any particular time, but looks very 70s-ish. It's a throwback not only to colorful horror like Suspiria, but also to the sillier giallo films. There's wonderfully creepy scenes of the dress floating above the beds of the character, like a cat balefully gloating over its prey, but there are also other scenes where the dress "creeps" along the ground, obviously tugged by someone offscreen, in a way that evokes Death Bed: The Bed That Eats. There's also more obviously intentionally funny moments, such as a running gag where a washing machine repairman's jargon hypnotizes his listeners.
A major location for the film is the department store that sells the dress in the first place. It's a deeply creepy and brightly-lit place populated by witchy women in black dresses who speak in a dense jargon of consumerism and marketing consultancy: "Did the transaction validate your paradigm of consumerism?" They are fairly funny but deeply strange and creepy.
The film mines the strangeness of retail fashion: selling the idea of a more glamorous vision of you, but also predatory; seductive, hypnotic, fetishistic, and artificial. A commercial for the store is shown many times, with the store worker women eternally beckoning you in. Delightfully weird!
I enjoyed the film for the most part. I didn't understand its sense of humor, but the horror elements were effective. It contains a fair helping of silliness, but is a creepy, sensual, psychedelic exploration of clothing stores first and foremost.
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