Dances With Films 2024: ‘Itch!’ Review
Stars: Bari Kang, Olivia Kang, Douglas Stirling, Patrick Michael Valley, Ximena Uribe, Mia Ventura Lucas | Written and Directed by Bari Kang
Known for his crime thrillers Lucky and The Scrapper, writer/director Bari Kang makes the transition to horror with his latest film, Itch!, which had its World Premiere at Dances With Films. It’s the second film from the festival I’ve reviewed, and like Bleeding, it looks at a supernatural creature, in this case zombies, from a different perspective and with an emphasis on the psychological as well as the physical risks of dealing with them.
Jay (Bari Kang) recently lost his wife, something their young daughter Olivia (Olivia Kang) can’t seem to accept, refusing to speak and writing notes asking to visit her mother. That, and a growing pile of past due medical bills, have him preoccupied to the point he’s not paying attention to the reports of people suffering from what has been dubbed “The Itch”.
Nobody knows just what it is, but it causes uncontrollable itching, leading the victims to tear themselves open trying to get relief and plunging New York City and the Tri-State Area into chaos. Just as people are coming to grips with that, the disease mutates and the infected become violent, leading to a state of emergency and everyone being put into lockdown.
In Jay’s case, that traps him and Olivia in his father’s store with a handful of others. A customer who picked the wrong time to go shopping Henry (Douglas Stirling; Finding Me: The Series, New York 2150), Miguel (Patrick Michael Valley; That’s Who You Hooked Up with?, Central Standard) a former employee who, along with his niece Gabriella (Ximena Uribe) came to rob the store intending to get the wages he says he was cheated out of. In the process, however, Gabriella shot and badly injured Lisa (Mia Ventura Lucas; Operation Eos, A Lista).
Basically a one-location film, it was shot in his family’s store, Itch! is more of an exercise in psychological horror than the siege horror one might expect from a zombie, or at least zombie-adjacent, film. Rather than concentrate on attacks and gore, though we do get some in the final act, the focus is more on the tensions between the characters. Especially the paranoia over whether or not any of them are infected. In a nod to the original Night of the Living Dead, that includes the mute Olivia, who is in the store after being sent home from school for biting a classmate.
What I liked most about Itch! was the way Kang manages to take a familiar setting and characters and continually manage to pull small surprises out of it. You may see where the plot is heading, but there is usually an unexpected twist to how it gets there. And I have to give him credit for an ending that manages to be both unexpected and disturbing. The cast also deserves credit for delivering performances that sell the film’s events and make the occasional questionable decision ultimately make sense, at least to the person making it.
Kang gets a lot of help from cinematographer Brendan McGowan (Buried & Forgotten, PETS. An Opera in Four Seasons) makes the store’s basement feel at times like a separate location unattached to the brightly lit main floor. Every time characters go down there I expected the worst and that is where some, though thankfully not all, of the film’s nastier moments occur.
McGowan also gives the film a look like it was one of the multitude of indie horrors that were filmed in NYC during the seventies. That’s backed up with the opening title card and the look of the end credits. In between, we get a bit of digital print damage. There’s just enough to be noticed without going overboard with it like many films have done, and the film benefits greatly from that restraint.
While it’s not quite the film I was expecting from the description, Itch! is a solid entry into the zombie genre and shows Kang has the potential to do interesting things with it if he chooses to explore it further. Maybe he can combine the two in a heist gone to hell type film, that’s something I’d happily watch.
*** 3/5
After its debut at Dances With Films, Itch! is scheduled to play other festivals, including San Francisco’s Another Hole in the Head Film Festival.
______
