2024 has been a good year for nostalgia-driven genre cinema so far. Especially with the widespread popularity of films like I Saw the TV Glow or Love Lies Bleeding, aesthetic homages to older, bygone media formats or revisionist interpretations or appropriations of those seem to be the dominating trend within the not-so-indie-anymore cinema — to the point that one can’t help but wonder if the future of genre films will solely depend on pastiche. Surely, this question begs for a lengthy, in-depth article, but it is still valid to stress on a smaller scale when discussing a film such as The Paragon, which, at first glance, hits close to the likes of A24’s lot but differs considerably from them through its bona fide lo-fi roots.
Set in Auckland, New Zealand, The Paragon tells the story of Dutch, a mouthy tennis coach who, after a hit-and-run accident, survives a near-death experience but is left crippled for life. Losing his job, his wife — his whole life, basically — and with nothing left but a gnawing need for revenge and a vague recollection of the car being a silver Toyota Corolla, he decides to find the person who did this to him. One day, during his Sisyphean quest, Dutch comes across a tear-off flyer promoting private coaching to “find hidden objects,” and is visited by the mysterious Lyra, a psychic who parades around wearing an unassuming cape and a face tattoo that looks like it was done at a temporary tattoo stand near a beach. Lyra is determined to teach Dutch the ways of psionic power through a strict yet nonsensical protocol that includes rules like sticking to a color diet. In a full-blown vindictive mood, Dutch complies, though his sole focus on the tele-location skills needed to find the culprit driver irritates the ever-disciplined Lyra. Ultimately, they strike a deal: Lyra will help Dutch find the car, and in return, Dutch will help her locate the Paragon, an extremely powerful cosmic crystal that yields hyper-dimensional power, and destroy it before it falls into the hands of her evil-spirited brother, Haxan.
In narrative terms, The Paragon very closely and faithfully follows the well-known tropes of good-versus-evil and the transformation of a self-serving, inept character into a hero. Yet, the self-awareness of its modest scope and its position with respect to the genres it nods to is what makes the film so endearing and delightful. The plot might have as many holes as a pair of worn-out socks, especially when it comes to space-time travel shenanigans, but it sure does know how the emotional machinery within a story usually operates — through empathy, identification, heroism, and sacrifice. Having worked on TV productions for nearly 15 years as a director, The Paragon is Michael Duignan’s first feature-length film, and since it’s the first thing that comes up on the Internet once you look it up, it’s worth mentioning that Duignan made the film with an almost nonexistent budget. Yet, The Paragon’s DIY-ness definitely achieves more than simply being part of catchy trivia for promotional purposes.
While many B-movie, oddball sci-fi, and fantasy re-imaginings with relatively big budgets try to emulate or, even worse, imitate existing tropes and films but end up either mocking or infantilizing them, Duignan stays faithful to their heart and soul through his means of production and approach to creativity. (Since we mentioned I Saw the TV Glow above, The Paragon feels more like how an episode of The Pink Opaque would have been than it was shown in the film.) From the costume department to visual effects, the practical and simple choices Duignan makes align with the well-dosed balance between seriousness and humor. The Paragon might tell a story with moral lessons, but it’s also a film in which the drawer of a hotel room, where the precious crystal is hidden, contains a Holy Bible as well as a butt plug. Thousands of cosmic years and parallel universes away from the postmodern cynicism of contemporary takes on sci-fi and fantasy, The Paragon takes the concept of genre back to basics and forms a psychic bond with its predecessors, so to speak.
DIRECTOR: Michael Duignan; CAST: Benedict Wall, Florence Noble, Michelle Ang, Jessica Grace Smith; DISTRIBUTOR: Doppelgänger Releasing; IN THEATERS: September 6; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 23 min.
Originally published as part of Fantasia Fest 2024 — Dispatch 3.
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