Review: ‘When We Dance the Music Dies’ is a psychological disturbia -

Emotional traumas – from death and other tragedies to sexual assault – have long been the crux of much of horror cinema. It’s a looking glass through which we perceive our own harsh realities. In contemporary times, there has been a renaissance for the kind of nail-biting skin-crawlers that reconfigure meanings of grief, PTSD, recovery, and our relationships to one another. Such films as Antichrist, Hereditary, Midsommar, and Mandy, among many others, employ the darkest of human vulnerabilities to dissect our world through various stages of psychological deterioration – often turning the screws just enough to further tighten the stakes and inevitable emotional payoff. When We Dance the Music Dies burrows itself into similar thematic ground, and screenwriter/director Anthony de Lioncourt plots a grieving father’s (William Ragsdale, of Fright Night fame) slow descent into madness.

The film, clocking in at just under an hour, takes grave inspiration from the real-life story of Elisa Lam, whose bizarre disappearance and death went viral back in 2013. The circumstances around exactly what happened are somewhat of an urban legend, the unspeakable kind that rattles doors off their hinges and casts the midnight hour in a chilly, ghostly frost. de Lioncourt configures his story in much the same way, and when Audrey Walton (played by Theresa Moriarty) goes missing, under similarly unexplainable circumstances, Ragsdale’s character discovers himself at the threshold of reality and another ungodly world. He’s so stricken with grief – Ragsdale giving a wallop of a performance – that his world begins to blur with blotchy, radioactive starbursts. de Lioncourt’s cinematography blends styles of Dario Argento (Suspiria, Phenomena) and Benjamin Loeb (Mandy) into a face-melting concoction of his own unnatural creation.

Tom Walton (Ragsdale) hunts for answers, but his mental devolution has other plans. His marriage to Helen [played to equally weighty perfection by Catherine Mary Stewart (Night of the Comet, The Apple)] quickly unravels as a cat batting a ball of yarn, and his faculties to delineate reality and fantasy ensnare him even further. Soon, all that’s left of him are mirages of the past – gutted by cult leader Clayton Riggs’ (Eric Roberts) inane ramblings. Even when nothing especially griping is occurring onscreen, there is a dark presence bubbling right below the surface.

For all this emotional baggage and 1-2-3 left hooks, When We Dance the Music Dies ultimately suffers from a scrawny run time. There is very little breathing room, which seems necessary for a story packing such brutal punches, and particular moments then miss the landing or deflate altogether. Perhaps, if given another 40 minutes or so, Tom’s psychological deconstruction could have been better explored until he spins into an absolute frenzy – his marriage, for instance, comes to an abrupt end without a proper peek into the process.

As it is, When We Dance is a delightful, mind-numbing glimpse into grief and its destructive hold over the body.