Protanopia

Matthew Mahler’s Protanopia is a psychological, acid-trip of a horror determined to incite epilepsy in its audience. Its explosive use of visual effects make the protagonists’ descent into madness real and visceral, but it feels a little hollow beneath the spectacle.

Alan Roscoe Jr. (Timothy Cox) is the recent recipient of a house passed down to him from his late father (John Mahler). Navigating difficult neighbours like Janice (Paula Mahler) looks like the extent of his worries. But a vision by Luke (Anthony Carey) of the house’s connection to a gruesome murder is a hint towards a terrifying true nature that hides in the Roscoe family.

Named after a form of colour blindness, Protanopia earns its title with psychedelic, traumatising usage of lighting and visual effects straight out of Lewis Carroll’s worst nightmare. Viewers will genuinely be seeing stars come the end of the hour-long running time, with the pulsating flash of the memorable and shocking experimental sequences bound to reverberate. These sequences are more than a gimmick – they are meticulously plotted and poured over to match the current tone of the story to perfection. Intense scenes surrounding murder or madness crank up the trauma with shocking flashes of red, whilst more contemplative scenes of discovery move at a slower, albeit still disturbing pace. They are integral to the film’s storytelling – which some viewers may find strange or off-putting. But they are delivered brilliantly in of themselves.

The story itself is quite standard stuff – even if the telling of it is anything but. A cursed inheritance and a missing girl come together to put Alan and Luke through the ringer, and their warping psyche that bends and breaks across the film is an entertaining throughline. But it is difficult to decipher a deeper meaning to all the madness. It may be that the director’s intention is to create a visual smorgasbord more than anything – and if so, mission accomplished. But a little more substance to the surface would have pushed this lower-budget passion project into a really rare realm of quality in the genre.

Outside of the visual mania there are a few production hiccups, with sound levels being off in certain scenes, a recurrent voiceover that sounds cartoonish and the setting becoming occasionally stale. However, this is offset by some genuinely impressive improvisation in others, such as John Mahler’s terrifying appearance as an undead version of Roscoe Sr. The director also extracts some fine performances from the cast – Paula Mahler’s Janice being a particular highlight which skirts the line between comic and sinister.

Protanopia is a genuinely interesting and lively film. Audiences can be assured that they will never be bored thanks to the electric use of colour and lighting, and Matthew Mahler’s masterful editing of these sequences in particular. Others will yearn for a little more story and substance, and for the film to have a better sense of exactly what it wants to say under all the chaos. But to build a horror from the ground up and have it stand out as much as Protanopia does is an accomplishment in itself – one that no one will be blind to.