Timothy Glaraton
Listen Carefully is the sort of film I live for, existing in a weird cross-section between David Lynch and The Twilight Zone with a healthy dose of psychoanalysis. In fact, the worst thing about the film is that it’s virtually impossible to talk about why I like it so much without spoiling the film’s major twist, so I’ll be doing that pretty early on in this review. If you’re just here to know if you should go watch Listen Carefully: yes. Yes you should, it’s already out on VOD, go watch it right away. Actually, go watch it sooner than right away, watch it ten minutes ago.
Now, spoiler alert from this point forward. As we find out in the final act of Listen Carefully, almost the entire film is a guilt-induced fever dream in the mind of the main character, Andy McNeary. Yes, “it was all just a dream” is not a revolutionary twist by any means, but what thoroughly impressed me was the way Listen Carefully makes use of this trope to thoroughly build up and then sequentially deconstruct Andy’s character. As we find out early on, Andy is no angel himself. He’s been carefully working on a scheme to defraud the bank he works at as an assistant manager, and every character, situation, and hellish vision we see is a reflection of what’s going on in Andy’s head as things spiral further and further out of his control.
He’s afraid that he can’t provide his wife and newborn daughter with a decent living—and the fact that his wife is out for a girls night without him, noting before she leaves that she would be out with him if “he wasn’t such a cheapskate” doesn’t help Andy’s anxiety one bit. In fact, it only gets worse and worse each time we check in on her over the phone, hearing her taking shots and flirting with strangers. He’s utterly paranoid that his company is closing in on his scheme, marked by the frequent calls from a cyber-fraud expert who’s investigating further and further. He’s angry, first at his boss for piling a bunch of extra responsibilities on while he’s away for the weekend golfing and then at the unseen kidnapper as his plans twist and turn. And most of all he feels both completely wrecked by guilt and terrified of the consequences that he feels unable to escape from. The voice on the other end of the baby monitor goes to great lengths to remind Andy of this particular feeling, noting that his newborn was only kidnapped because the kidnappers had caught onto his scheme and that once he meets their demands nobody will ever know about what he’s done.
Given that the film is so heavily focused on exploring the psyche of its protagonist, it wisely chooses to take the early Twilight Zone approach of keeping a very light cast—I don’t believe I ever saw more than two or three characters on screen at any given time. It bathes the entire film in a feeling of isolation and paranoia, only heightened by the fact that most of the time it’s a two-man show between Andy and one of his many external demons: the cyber-fraud expert, the voice over the baby monitor, or the police officer he has a number of unnerving encounters with over the course of the night. Writer, director, and star Ryan Barton-Grimley’s acting can feel a little muted at times, but overall he does a more than capable job of keeping the narrative of Listen Carefully moving forward and selling us on Andy’s increasingly fragile state of mind.
Now, the psychoanalytical aspect might be what I’m nerding out for, but rest assured that Listen Carefully is also a compelling horror-thriller as well. The film’s visual highlights are an increasingly unhinged series of visions that Andy is tormented by—finding himself covered in blood, tied down and surrounded by dozens of baby monitors, or being chased by a gang of weirdos in grotesque masks. The film hardly ever lets up the pressure it puts on its protagonist or the intense pace at which the narrative moves along, the heart of which is seeing just how far Andy is willing to go to try and fix the situation he’s in—and how much he’s motivated by trying to save his daughter versus how much he’s motivated by trying to save himself.
But my personal highlight of Listen Carefully has to be the last half hour or so. Having spent most of its time being a relatively straightforward, almost Hitchcockesque “ordinary guy pulled in way over his head” type thriller, the film’s narrative throws in a major twist out of nowhere and suddenly sends things spinning off completely into left field. From here, the narrative starts to collapse further and further as Andy finally reaches his breaking point, with an ending that deliberately leaves the fate of Andy and his family ambiguous.
Listen Carefully is a true hidden gem of a film, thrilling, unnerving, and at times utterly deranged. It’s one of my favorite new films of the year, and one that I cannot recommend highly enough.
