Bliss is one of those movies that I kinda just stumbled upon. I watched it for the first time when I was 18 and looking for more “vibey films”. Movies that take you on an experience instead of just a straight forward plot. I just graduated high school and was going to film school, so I wanted to expand what I was watching and maybe discover more about the medium than what I already knew. This was the perfect film for that and it was my first Joe Begos film. During that time, it was a Shudder exclusive, which is a great place to find strange and bold genre cinema. They’re willing to take chances on films that many others won’t.
Bliss is a trippy horror flick set in the underbelly of Las Angeles. All of our characters, specifically the lead character Dezzy (played wonderfully by Dora Madison) are all people who live in the city bur haven’t really made it yet. A bunch of creative types who take advantage of each others’ kindness as they try to somehow make it big. The trippy elements come into play about 30 minutes in after she takes some new “powerful” drugs and has a threesome fling with a mysterious pair. After that, the film fully becomes a flashy neon nightmare as the genre morphs into a creature feature/killer film in a sense.
Bliss is one of those films that is strengthened by how it looks and sounds. The cinematography and use of colors and strobes throws you right into the action and the way they mix the sound helps pull you in even more. The way they choose to blend the score and some of the stoner rock on the soundtrack with the trippy visuals and interesting cinematography leads to an experience like no other. As she gets deeper into the monster mindset brought on by the circumstances, the camerawork becomes more eratic and wild while the sound and music gets more distorted and loud. The choice to shoot this film on film to make it look like a lost 70s or 80s horror flick also helped with the experience and made it stand out amongst other lower budget horror efforts.
The way this film implements the more horny and violent elements of the story also ties into the downward spiral in a sense. The film gets more violent and erotic as it goes on and the presentation of these scenes get more erratic and trippy as it goes on. This film focuses heavily on putting you in her mindset and taking you on this trippy nightmare odyssey and it does a good job at it.
The performance of Dora Madison is also a standout element of the film. She’s someone I didn’t see in anything before Bliss and I wish I saw her in more since then. She is the main focus of the film and she chews it up. When the main switch happens that throws you into the trippy new world, she goes from a hundred to a thousand percent. She’s someone who I would love to see in more and I feel is super under-utilized in the world of cinema. She showed with this film that she has it and I would definitely cast her in stuff if I was out there making horror cinema.
The meaning and subtext of the film is something that is quite an inter dive as well. I see it as a film about substance abuse, but my mom’s read on it was about the nature for people to use each other specifically in the entertainment in the industry. My current read of it is a mix of those two concepts into one bigger subtextual message.
There’s also a trans component that I don’t think is fully examined in the film, but I wanted to bring it up here because I noticed it every viewing and it’s stood out more every new viewing. There are two particular scenes where Dezzy’s anatomy is brought up in a way that perked up my ears a bit. The first is a scene where she discusses how she did an adult shoot and how she wasn’t paid for it but it still ended up out there. In this discussion, she brings up both types of anatomy which I caught at first. The second scene is after the trippy threesome where the pair are telling one of Dezzy’s friends how they discovered that she had “male genitalia” but they totally were fine with it. The inclusion of those two scenes feel purposeful and I don’t know why they would be added in the script phase and the final result if it didn’t have a deeper purpose. Is Dezzy a trans woman, we don’t fully know that. Joe Begos hasn’t gone one record that I know of explicitly confirming or denying if she is, but my head cannon says that she is. It would be cool to figure out at some point from one of the cast or crew if that is indeed correct, but for now she exists in my personal trans character hall of fame.
Bliss is a movie that I stumbled upon while looking for more experimental cinema, specifically horror cinema and I loved it. A trippy nightmare into the downward spiral of an artist who just wants to finish a piece of work but some more monstrous elements are both helping her and getting in her way. A lead performance that rocks, a great rock soundtrack and some inventive uses of the audiovisual landscape make this one an interesting watch. If you are looking for a trippy horror flick with a killer punk aesthetic, this is your film!
The Rating
