Review: ASKING FOR A FRIEND is a Cut Above the Rest
Asking for a Friend poses a really fun and frightening question: what would you do if your best friend asked you to help them dispose of a dead body? How would you react? Would you ask them what happened or would you get rid of it with no questions asked? And maybe the most pertinent question: can this situation be funny?
In the case of the short film Asking for a Friend, the answer is a resounding, “Yes!” The story of Blake (Jacqueline Bell) and her corpse-burdened friend Q (Victoria Lacoste) is filled with loads of dark humor as they try to find the best way to clean up and discard a mysterious dead body (writer/director Kelsey Bollig). Making matters worse, there is a party going on downstairs and it’s going to take some skillful maneuvering to avoid alerting the partygoers.
This section of the short film is where Asking for a Friend shines the brightest. Bollig finds really fun and twisted ways to escalate the conflict of a dead body disposal plot. Blake gets pulled aside by friends and has to play it cool, and then she ends up being made to take some mind-altering drug. The sense of play at work here sells the concept and keeps you rooted with the main characters and their plight. But, the most demented and brilliant gag comes from the pool of blood that’s soaking through the floor into the party downstairs. If you liked the opening scene of Blade, the payoff to this deranged idea is worthy of applause.
But amidst all the psychotic fun, Bollig makes smart choices with maintaining the dynamic between her two lead characters. The level of support and genuine friendship keeps us on their side. Naturally, you will be asking yourself if we’ll be getting an explanation as to who this recently deceased person is. I’m not going to spoil the resolution to that, but I will say that the short acknowledges this and decides to make a pointed statement about it. And frankly, it’s the right call with how everything else plays out.
Because while this is a story with ghoulish glee at its core – and we’re gonna talk about how delightful that is – it’s also a tale about two women and their affection for each other. Bollig wants to showcase a female-centric horror/comedy that puts the onus on its characters instead of any blunt messaging. It doesn’t bludgeon its audience with #girlpower. Instead, it commits to its characters as fully-formed individuals that are also women. In this way, it presents female authenticity in a more genuine way than other projects that rely on their messaging to work for them. When we talk about “strong female characters”, we should really be talking about “well-written female characters”, and Asking for a Friend is anchored by exactly that.
However, Asking for a Friend is also here to have a good, gory time. And boy howdy does it ever. The body cast of Bollig created by Jason Hamer and Hiro Yada from Hamer FX (American Horror Story, Swiss Army Man) gets hacked to pieces in a sequence that will please any gorehound. Bollig is keenly aware of how to make all of this horrific subject matter extremely funny, and her two lead actors always temper the violence of the material with goofy heart. There is also a jump scare in the movie that might have caused my hardest laugh of the year so far. There is no doubt that Bollig gets how to make disturbing material shockingly hilarious.
In fact, I’d be willing to watch a feature-length version of Asking for a Friend. The trope of having to deal with a dead body is well-worn in cinema, and Bollig has managed to find a fresh angle to approach it from. Thanks to her skillful direction and sharp camera work from cinematographer Luke Hanlein, Asking for a Friend brings a very modern look to a familiar movie concept. The climactic disposal scene is elegantly staged and lit and makes what was surely a very intimate production look much more expensive.
We don’t highlight short films as much as we should in the film discussion world, and Asking for a Friend is proof that we need to keep our eyes out for what’s going on in that world. It’s a film with a clear sense of attitude, wit, and serious polish from the script all the way up through every facet of production. When the end credits play out with a look behind the scenes, you get a wonderful bit of punctuation on the entire endeavor. It’s a triumphant note to leave on and a reminder of how passionate good film productions can be.
Asking for a Friend is a macabre treat for anyone who enjoys the maniacal pleasures of horror. Add to this its feminist strength by doing something as simple as making all its core characters women (even the corpse!) and you have a piece of cinema that delivers on every level.
Asking for Friend premieres June 22 on Alter.
