Shot entirely in writer-director Tyler Taormina’s suburban Long Island hometown during the eerie hours between midnight and predawn, Happer’s Comet surveys an array of empty spaces and sleepless figures. What lighting there is comes from one of two ambient sources—electricity or the moon—and yet to call the film a noir would be misleading. Rather than menacing or oppressive, its sense of obscurity is almost soothing.
The film’s camera is drawn to anything that gleams and shimmers: the speaks of dust floating in a swimming pool, the blinking of electronic gizmos, the galaxy of water droplets across a windshield. Taormina’s unique sensibility makes the film, more than anything, a cinematic tone poem, expressing a reconciliation with sleeplessness as time yawns into strange infinitudes.
Happer’s Comet has no real plot or characters. As pure montage, the film derives its coherency from the time of day and,...
The film’s camera is drawn to anything that gleams and shimmers: the speaks of dust floating in a swimming pool, the blinking of electronic gizmos, the galaxy of water droplets across a windshield. Taormina’s unique sensibility makes the film, more than anything, a cinematic tone poem, expressing a reconciliation with sleeplessness as time yawns into strange infinitudes.
Happer’s Comet has no real plot or characters. As pure montage, the film derives its coherency from the time of day and,...
- 6/12/2023
- by William Repass
- Slant Magazine
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