Marrow
The journalist is the journalist, the story is the story, and one should never become the other; the age of podcasting having made the personality of the presenter a part of the experience as much as the matters under discussion, with little oversight or editorial control; her media mogul aunt pushing her to be more edgy, to never shy away from what the audience want, despite misgivings, Embracing the Paradox’s Distal Marrow has been dared.
Positioned as a true crime and serial killer documentary, Distal pouting for the camera in red wig and matching lip gloss, her expansion to cryptids and other less bloody mysteries has not been received well, but contact from a cryptically identified listener calling themselves NOOSPLEHDEENI points to a lead closer to her Texas home, four women from her state, podcasters working in the same field as Distal, all missing.
Directed by Mitch McLeod from a script co-written with Preston Fassel and Jessica Dawn Willis, the latter stars as Jamie Foster, living in chosen isolation in her forest cabin, surrounded by nature in all its grim beauty, finding dead wildlife on the trail on her daily run, by night donning the red wig and persona of Distal Marrow, confident when she is control of the situation but too easily thrown to be on the front line, yet instead of prudence she finds the opportunity enervating, caution and the thin facade of journalistic integrity abandoned.
Her sponsor Camilla Moore (Danielle Harris) proving that bitch runs in the family, giving lip service to concerns about the wellbeing of her niece she pushes her to cover material she is uncomfortable with and threatens to pull the show if she doesn’t get results, while Doctor Jonathan Myers (Michael Ironside) believes he has had previous contact with the mysterious caller who knows too much about Jamie, her real name and her past, and the other women.
Paralleling and pointing towards the real Embracing the Paradox YouTube channel, the first hour of Marrow is engaging as the mystery becomes a seductive rabbit hole where Jamie allows herself to become intoxicated, the police (Matthew Tompkins and Carlos Cortez as Sergeant Frank Mitchell Detective Roger Riggs) showing up at her door, she lying to them and withholding material evidence about Kimberly Black (Ashley Spicer) whose podcast explored black magic.
Jamie increasingly unstable, her obsession an inverse state to her objectivity, obstructing the investigation to hold exclusivity on the story, the host who was once voyeur and profiteer the subject of her own story which has nowhere to go, a precarious house of cards built on the reveal of a single hand, the threads to be woven together an unsatisfactory patchwork which has the taint of rushed desperation, recalling Sinister but lacking impact or sophistication, the craved attention given but unrewarded.
Marrow will be available on digital download from Tuesday 2nd November
