Review #160: In Fabric (2018)

This review was originally written in 2022.

Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #15 - In Fabric (2018)

This is, without question, one of the most bizarre movies I've seen in a long, long time. Possibly ever. Top ten weirdest in my life, definitely. The entire movie I was constantly trying to latch onto a detail here, a clue there, hoping to piece together some sort of big puzzle that would make the entire narrative coherent. Unfortunately, it never happened, and I have no idea what I just watched.

There's gonna be some spoilers in here, but I promise you, it won't affect your viewing of the movie because I don't even know if there's a plot here TO spoil. The (story?) of this movie starts off following Marianne Jean-Baptiste as Sheila, a lovelorn divorcee who is getting back into the dating game so she buys a dress from what can only be described as a lovecraftian sex cult posing as a department store. The dress is... cursed? Or haunted? And it REALLY doesn't like being washed, and by the halfway point of the movie Sheila dies so the movie just picks a new protagonist with only a tangential relation to the previous one. This new protagonist (Reg, played by Leo Bill) is a washing machine repairman who gets fired for fixing his own washing machine (I'm not joking, that's actually a plot point) who dies of carbon monoxide poisoning while his fiancee goes clothes shopping and gets stuck in the dressing room while the building burns down.

If that summary sounded bizarre and disjointed, it's probably because I forgot to mention Reg has a superpower where if he starts talking about washing machine repair it puts everyone around him into a euphoric trance, and some characters are aware of this and want it to happen? Oh wait, that just makes it more confusing, doesn't it? Well, it's in the movie. Also the clothing store clerks are (I think) living mannequins except this never comes into play except for an extremely disturbing scene where the store (owner?) graphically touches himself to an upsettingly anatomically-correct mannequin.

So much of this movie is so incredibly bizarre and surreal that I figured it HAS to be self-aware, right? It's playing some kind of joke on the audience. "What's the most ridiculous thing we could possibly have happen? Here's an idea- while Sheila is being reprimanded by her bosses, have her tell them about an unrelated dream she had and one of the bosses will take notes as if this is or ever will be relevant to her job or the film." But so much of the film seems so incredibly self-serious that I legitimately can't tell if this is the result of a filmmaker being up their own butt or just having a laugh.

I can't honestly say I liked this film. But the movie kept me watching and wasn't boring, so I have to give it some credit for that.

Overall Rating: 6/10 Self-Destructing Washing Machines

My Unironic Wish For This Film: Give me more of the dress moving around on its own. I was always delighted to see that.