It’s a sign of great writing when you can identify everything you love and hate about a character, but can’t decide whether you love or hate them. In Sabrina Greco’s directorial debut, Lockjaw, Rayna (Blu Hunt) bears the burden of these ambiguities as an impulsive young woman facing two realities: that her shame, insecurities, and personal failings are much easier to read than she thinks; and that, for more reason than one, she isn’t capable of processing them herself.
We meet Rayna at the drunken end of a long night out. She promises her friends, Mitch and Noah (Colin Burgess and Kevin Grossman, respectively), that she’s fine to drive home. They protest, but not very forcefully, and when she sees an opportunity, Rayna bolts for her car, gets inside, and drives away, though the inevitable crash is only heard off-screen. Six weeks later, Rayna and Mitch, now her boyfriend, are on the verge of their first night out since her accident, and she bears a conspicuous legacy of her mistake in a broken jaw, now wired shut. The ensuing 77 minutes track the events of their long misadventure, an odyssey-in-miniature during which they reunite with Noah, having drifted apart since the accident; meet, and insinuate themselves into the lives of, Robert and Cleo (Nick Corirossi and Ally Davis), a mentalist and performance artist, respectively, the former of whose performance they attend early in the night; and fight over the status of their relationship, particularly as it involves Annabelle (Sally Sum), a young woman bafflingly eager to befriend Rayna.
Rayna’s first encounter with Robert, the mentalist, introduces him as an observer, through whom the audience gets its clearest picture of Rayna’s contradictions and shame. Before his act he walks around the venue surreptitiously taking pictures of audience members. It’s too late to do anything when Rayna realizes Robert has taken a picture of her, and soon enough she finds herself a part of his act, shifting uncomfortably and then bolting for the door when he inquires a little too deeply as to why she refuses to answer his questions. Later, after Rayna essentially invites herself and Mitch over to Robert and Cleo’s home, her actions become not only more reckless, but their motivations increasingly transparent, though Robert, dangerously and thrillingly, is the only one to see them, and he makes it his personal mission to get to the bottom of Rayna’s peculiar behavior.
For her part, Hunt is an extremely game performer, and she takes on her character’s physical limitations with real commitment. Of course, Rayna’s locked jaw is a metaphor for her shame, but it’s also a social calling card that makes her a magnet for the attention, however gawky and insensitive, she desperately craves. It affords this potentially obvious symbol with real thematic staying power. Not just psychologically loaded, it infuses the film with a palpable, visceral discomfort, the shared feeling between herself and the viewer of constant struggle against either her own impulse to speak or against the physical restraints themselves. That we don’t know for sure which one she’s fighting against in any given moment, and that Rayna can’t express herself, is the film’s biggest strength.
Perhaps paradoxically, in light of her crippling insecurities, Rayna rarely puts on airs. At once rude, needy, standoffish, and pitiful, her lack of classifiability is what makes her so frustrating to the people around her. While Robert can point out the fact that she’s hiding something, he never knows what it is or why, until he does some investigation. Even Mitch and Noah, increasingly weary of Rayna’s impulsive behavior and obstinance — she defiantly paints on one of Cleo’s costumes and refuses, or, perhaps, in a Buñuelian way, is unable, to leave the house after it’s made clear she’s not welcome anymore — can’t seem to shake her from their concerns and sympathies; they really like her, despite Rayna’s best efforts to antagonize them.
For all of the reasons the film is rewarding, however, it’s also a slog. One could ungenerously suggest the film’s drawn-out narrative, made up entirely of moments of character development rather than plot, would be better suited to a short film; and it’s hard to disagree. Greco renders what should be banal social situations into the most painfully awkward versions of themselves, and makes the viewer internalize them. It immerses you in the craggy, unsavory world of its protagonist’s mind, and very rarely lets you up for air.
Respite comes, mercifully, in moments of Rayna’s burgeoning self-awareness and acceptance of guilt. Perhaps accepting that Rayna, either deliberately or subconsciously, refuses to leave their house, Cleo finally seems willing to meet her on a human-to-human level. Offering Rayna a drink, which she’s been refusing the whole night given what it compels her to do, she accepts, seeing no real point in holding back anymore. Pressed for some insight, Rayna admits to Cleo exactly what happened the night of the accident. Unable to verbalize it, however, she types her recollection of the events into her phone, and has the text to voice function read aloud. Siri’s cool, robotic inflections, devoid of affectation, actually infuse the scene with a perverse kind of profundity. In the silence between these two people, essentially enemies for the duration of their relationship, what better way to express painful feelings than through a robot that can iron them flat.
Published as part of Slamdance Film Festival 2025 — Dispatch 1.
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