Indy Film Fest — Anchorage

An odd and sobering (but not at all sober) on-the-road film about two brothers in search of success.

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Director Scott Monahan and writer Dakota Loesch have successfully made their stamp on the budding genre of Florida Man Cinema.

Florida Man Cinema isn’t a real thing; I made it up. But I’ve coined such a term in response to an uptick in movies, over the last several years, that seem to embody the “Florida Man” meme in their central characters and conceits — The Beach Bum, Spring Breakers, and Red Rocket, to name a few; films that capture the chaotic, lawbreaking debauchery characterized by the headline-based meme.

Anchorage follows Jacob (Monahan) and John (Loesch), two brothers traveling across the country, from Florida to Alaska, in hopes of upselling the massive amount of illegal narcotics they’ve mysteriously obtained for high-six-figure profits. Jacob and John are both as wild and unruly as one would expect from a pair of young men from Florida willing to drive a junker 5,000-plus miles to Alaska (by way of California, for some reason) to sell pills.

Jacob’s electric-blue hair, John’s silly red long-johns, and their collective love of playing stupid games, while they do drugs in abandoned homes between long drives across the desert, do plenty to set the scene early on.

Florida Men they certainly are, though John appears to be not only the ringleader of the operation but also the unpredictable puppeteer of their entire relationship dynamic. Being the elder, he knows Jacob looks up to him and exploits that. John makes sure to remind Jacob periodically why they’re driving all this way instead of stopping short somewhere else, like, say, Los Angeles — the pills are simply worth more way up north.

John also periodically reminds Jacob who’s in charge, and it’s these moments where we begin to see just how manipulative John is, capitalizing on Jacob’s feelings of brotherhood and vulnerability toward him, as well as threatening and insulting him when he strays from the plan. One can imagine how their relationship begins to erode when trouble starts popping up only halfway to their destination.

It’s a rather simple and obvious dynamic from the get-go, but Monahan and Loesch play these characters with their entire being. I found some footage from Monahan’s other work, and his transformation into Jacob is astonishing. Likewise, Loesch fully becomes the violent and calculating John. Both brothers are impulsive, repulsive jackasses, and at the same time, utterly empathetic and strangely rootable, thanks to Monahan’s and Loesch’s careful handling of them as human beings.

The desolate atmosphere of their travels through the California desert is heightened by cinematographer Erin Naifeh’s deft handheld photography. The sun-bleached white-beige of the arid landscape contrasts with Jacob and John’s ICEE-colored getups to keep you focused on them amidst the vast and open nothingness that surrounds them.

As tensions ramp up between the two, so does the feverishness and violence of their behavior, toward one another and toward others. Anchorage is never really a comedy, but there is a smart and effective shift about halfway (maybe two-thirds) through the movie, from “observational piece about two bozos getting way in over their heads” to “grim and brutal character study of two drug addicts at the end of their rope.”

Where it ends up is neither entirely surprising nor completely satisfying, but it’s effective in delivering on the impending dread of inevitable failure that looms over Jacob and John’s entire journey.

Despite playing things relatively simple all the way through, and never really deciding what it’s trying to get across (though maybe that’s, in a way, the point?), Anchorage is a truly distinctive and memorable indie road flick, featuring some of the best performances from a movie of this size that I’ve seen in a long time. If I had the time, I would love to watch it again on the big screen this Friday.

I hope Monahan and Loesch stick together awhile longer on their own journey through the film industry, because, while Jacob and John spell one another’s doom, I think these two have found a recipe for memorable storytelling together.