Levers (2025) Movie Drinking Game
Take a Drink: for graven images
Take a Drink: for tarot cards
Take a Drink: for newscasts
Take a Drink: for disembodied voices
Do a Shot: for explosions
By: Henry J. Fromage (Two Beers) –
It’s not a film festival without some true arthouse fare- the kind as likely to play an art museum as a movie theater.
Levers amply fills that quota for me this year. It is set in a world that inexplicably blacks out across the globe for exactly one day, after which humanity tries to come to terms with what just happened.
A Toast
Manitoban filmmaker and artist Rhayne Vermette creates a trippy, portentous tone coupled with self-shot 16mm imagery that goes a long way to cementing it. The aspect ratio and film grain & imperfections add to the uncanny effect of her plotting and staging- conversations are often heard and not seen, or the camera focuses elsewhere as people carry on their discussions.
Vermette has a playful sense of humor as well, though- this is not a dirge even if foreboding is one of the principal colors in her palette. There are some hints of historical trauma, like the nuns who blindfold the indigenous people towards the end, and definitely an overall witchy and anxious vibe. Something’s deeply wrong in this world, and it’s not just a temporary disappearance of the sun that’s made it so.
Beer Two
This is without a doubt an avante garde approach- the imagery and sound design tell a story perfectly fine on its own, but there’s not a lot of story in the traditional sense. Let it carry you along in its waves of mood- and maybe make sure you’re in that kind of mood before watching.
Verdict
Levers is an exercise in atmosphere and style, one meant to put you in a particular frame of mind as it’s trippy images play out before you.
