All I know is Walt Disney's lawyers are probably climbing onto helicopters and planning a raid on Park City right now.
See, the entire film is set inside the property at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, and a fair amount of the film appears to have been actually shot on the property, during business hours, without anyone's permission. It is largely stolen feature film, and while they were careful to change all the music so they're not playing anything in the film that they could get sued over, they are still including tons and tons of familiar Disney iconography. Mickey Mouse, Goofy, Pluto, Donald Duck… all the costumed characters appear. We see huge chunks of the "Snow White" ride, portions of the "Winnie The Pooh" ride, material shot inside the Haunted Mansion. There's an entire sequence built around waiting in line for the Buzz Lightyear ride. They go to Epcot, and Spaceship Earth is prominently featured and even blown up at one point. It feels like someone saw "Eraserhead" and said, "Hey, why don't we get that guy to shoot an infomercial for the Magic Kingdom to get more families to come?" and this is the oh-so-not-what-they-wanted result. It is a magnificent, impossible nightmare.
It is not possible that this film exists. It is not possible that they shot long scripted sequences on the actual rides. It is not possible that I just saw a film in which it is suggested and then shown that the various Disney princesses all work as high-priced hookers who sell their wares to wealthy Asian businessmen. It simply cannot be true.
By using the real Disney parks and then by tweaking it in small ways, Moore turns this familiar space into something both oppressive and surreal, and he seems to be fascinated and disgusted in equal measure by the sort of plastic happiness that the Disney parks sell to the public. It is genuinely sinister, and I am sure the next time I have my own family at one of the parks, lots of the imagery from this film is going to linger with me.
The movie is undisciplined at times, rough around the edges in places, technically uneven, and there's no sense of pacing to it at all. Even so, there is a sort of naive charm that makes it impossible to look away. I don't love every element of the film, but I love that this is a movie, that I actually saw this thing, and that Moore was deranged enough to make it the way he did. I'm no fool… I can tell that there were sections they accomplished by shooting background plates and then performing some scenes in green screen, but there is far more of it that they shot in the real locations without anyone's knowledge, and that stuff has an energy that's unlike any other movie I've ever seen.
Escape From Tomorrow - Sundance Clip
Watch this Sundance clip from Randy Moore's 'Escape From Tomorrow' http://www.hitfix.com/videos/escape-from-tomorrow-sundance-clip
I honestly feel like this is never going to see the light of day. I can't imagine any other studio or distributor wanting to tangle with Disney's legal department on what could or couldn't be shown. There will be changes made, and I'm guessing there's a chance it'll just vanish. But I think the film's existence raises some fascinating questions about how you can use something shot in a public space, what control Disney truly has over images shot on their property, and the nature of what constitutes a legitimate use of a trademarked figure. Is this social commentary? Pointed satire? Legitimate anxiety that should be protected as free speech about the world we all live in? I'm not sure. All I know is that Moore has made something singular, a completely original film, and he's done it in a way that feels like a magic trick. Here's hoping he gets a chance to share it with more audiences.
"Escape From Tomorrow" will screen again tomorrow morning, Sunday the 20th, Thursday the 24th, and Saturday the 26th.
Perhaps the most unusual thing I've ever seen at a film festival, "Escape From Tomorrow" is a slow descent into madness, told from the perspective of a father who finds out that he has lost his job on the final morning of a family vacation. As he spends the day with his family, trying to make them happy, his grip on reality seems to come gradually unhinged, leading to… well, I'm not sure I could describe what it leads to even if it weren't a spoiler. Shot in black-and-white, the film has a strange disassociated vibe to the storytelling, and writer/director Randy Moore has a very clear authorial voice. It is not an understatement to say that it is one of the most unsettling things I've experienced in a theater in quite a while, and part of that is because, even now, even after seeing the Q&A with Moore, even after talking it over with Goss while we ate dinner, even after going over it in my head, I still don't fully understand what I just saw.
Read more at http://www.hitfix.com/motion-captured/review-escape-from-tomorrow-is-a-surrealist-treat-that-will-give-disneys-lawyers-nightmares#Iic1DViA3yXZPJPd.99
Interview with Randy Moore: http://youtu.be/Fvj7m47C__E
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