Lost Transmissions (2019)

(On TV, August 2022) I’ll forever support the right of filmmakers to go for bleak depressing subject matters, but I’m not forced to like the result, and for all that I may be tempted to praise writer-director Katharine O’Brien for her unsentimental look at mental illness in the context of the music industry, Lost Transmission is a long and unfulfilling slog. Despite taking place in Los Angeles, it showcases the city in dull overcast cinematography, sucking the joy out of its setting as much as its lead character suffers from unmedicated schizophrenia. Props go to Simon Pegg for a dramatic role opposite of the charismatic, likable comic characters he usually plays—it’s not much of a stretch considering the charm he can show during the character’s manic episodes, but the interest of his performance comes when he takes apart his own life without understanding why. Juno Temple also features as a woman unexplainably trying to help him out, while Alexandra Daddario is a two-scene wonder as a thoroughly unlikable music diva. There’s something interesting in Lost Transmissions’ unglamorous treatment of its subject matter, or its depiction of the underbelly of the L.A. music scene. But the result falls short of most expectations: the film simply goes on until it ends without much of a resolution, not being any easier to watch at any point before then.