Nightstream 2020: ‘It Cuts Deep’ marries mumblecore and slasher

There’s something charmingly resonant about mumblecore. It’s not trying to be anything other than a bland slice of life. Our lives aren’t want social media makes it out to be; by most metrics, we see the same people and do the same things, day-in and day-out. Slap a pandemic ontop of it all, and what we’ve got is a slog of an existence. When it comes to a film like It Cuts Deep, playing this year’s Nightstream, writer and director Nicholas Payne Santos, in his feature directorial debut, force feeds you the most banial of conversation between your average millennial couple. And that’s most assuredly the point.

Sam (Charles Gould) and Ashley (Quinn Jackson) have been dating for awhile. They clearly adore one another, but, as is customary when you reach a certain romantic threshold, it’s time to take things to the next level. Discussions around marriage and child-rearing backdrop their holiday vacation to Sam’s quaint, but unremarkable, hometown. There’s no cell service, of course, an obvious indicator of things to come, so they’re forced to confront their issues head-on. Ashley wants the American dream, but Sam is diametrically opposed to any such talk. He’s far more content to live with what is comfortable and safe and unobtrusive to the lies he’s forged thus far.

It Cuts Deep opens with a Jason Voorhees-approved kill, staging Sam’s horrific adolescence and teasing the entire impetus behind his oddly aggressive behavior. When childhood best friend Nolan (John Anderson) pops back into the picture, an even-tempered counter-weight to Sam’s hot-headedness, the past makes a ferocious return and bites them both in the ass. Santos delicately peels back the narrative layers, an onion smell that engages every one of the senses, and an undaunted disposition to relentlessly slap you across the chest with such teeth-grating discomfort leaves an uncompromising impact.

It’s downright distressing, particularly when Sam takes any comment or sideways glance from either Ashely or Nolan as an off-color jab at his character or intentions. Sam is a textbook case in toxic masculinity, and his tendencies to over-compensate, or even gaslight Ashley in micro-aggressive increments, soon unspool what is proven to be an already fraying relationship. Sam’s fragility drives the narrative in such a way that the viewer should probably expect the absolute worst when all is said and done ⏤ its predictability is part of its charms.

It’s awkward as hell, too, and Gould and Jackson’s timing is so perfectly in-tune you can’t help but cringe and then laugh at the absurdity of it all. It Cuts Deep is delightful and crude, a film with lean but fatty meat, and while it takes 20 minutes to rev up its engines, the second half burns some serious rubber and delivers quite a psychotic 1-2 punch.

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