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Myth of Man
Sci-Fi Fantasy / Silent / 2025
WHY'D I WATCH IT?
If anybody on this website is going to review this movie on release day, you're damn skippy it's gonna be me.
WHAT'D I THINK? *SPOILERS*
For context, Jamin Winans' first full-length movie, Ink, has been in my Top 10 ever since I've seen it. It is not without it's flaws, which I have happily torn into it for, but it never fails to get me to tear up by the end.
I am the only one to have reviewed it and it is possibly the longest review I have written on this site.
Winans' second movie, The Frame, was a big disappointment by comparison. My review for it was 11 pages long and I sent it directly to the creators. Honestly, I barely remember the movie. The most I can recall is some huge buildup to a character playing the violin and the movie cuts to credits before we hear a damn thing. I hated it.
Regardless, I've enjoyed Winans' shorts and his overall style I find appealing, so I'm certainly on board to see the next thing from him... so long as it's not a ****ing documentary about the impact of social media on kids.
This time around we get another fantasy/sci-fi story, but it's clear this time the budget and ambition were dialed up to 11. We have an entirely original world, with an entirely original mythos, entirely original technology, and the whole thing is told purely through music and imagery because the main character is a deaf mute.
Suffice it to say, I honestly believe this is the most creative movie I've seen in literal years.
But whether or not that creativity pans out to a good movie is another thing entirely.
Because the entire story is told without any words heard or read, I'm going to have to come up with my own terms to describe the plot.
Main Girl works as an artist who is employed to use magical technology to essentially translate her artwork into a movie about this world's Creation Story.
The Creation Story posits the existence of The Artist with a pair of [musical] horns on their back who brings sound and imagery into the world and essentially creates this world's "Adam" before retreating into the sky as a comet. Adam is assailed by an unknown creature and sings out to The Artist who reappears from the comet to save them.
Everyone in the movie shares these horns on their back, but they are never shown to serve any clear purpose.
Every day, an artificial night falls, as a comet, the alleged Artist, crosses the sky, but nearly as often, the world is attacked by red Smoke which dissolves anyone it touches. Exposure to The Smoke is directly correlated to a meter everyone also has on their arm which indicates a sort of Infection Level. Eventually, if someone progresses too far, they simply die.
Main Girl takes up the habit of drawing current and future victims of the Smoke and presenting them to the comet in an effort to summon The Artist to save them. At some point, Main Girl herself is directly exposed to The Smoke, losing her eye and part of her hands in the process and presents her own picture to The Artist.
She even goes so far as to use her work device which translates images to sound, but it sucks up trash and is damaged in the process, losing her her job.
It is only after this, however, that strange symbols are printed to a dial inside of the device and she begins witnessing these symbols appearing over the heads of people singing or producing some sort of sound.
One such person, who we'll call Main Guy, is a graffiti artist who she discovers can suck out the infection to stave off his own death. He also later provides her with a magical camera which projects the images in her head onto a backdrop, finally giving her a clear means of communicating to those around her.
Essentially, the movie follows Main Girl as she attempts to assemble everyone with the observed symbols over their heads in a belief that there is a divine purpose in doing so. Most of the characters are skeptical or don't understand, but as they have various brushes with The Smoke/Infection, Main Girl is able to reach out to them and ground them in some way... though what, if anything, she's able to do is never entirely clear.
The best part about this is what I'll call the "Allegorical Space". Basically, as Main Girl is interacting with The Smoke/Infection, she is portrayed in a world composing of photos, however, unlike herself, everyone else who appears in this world is presented as deaf and blind, and only she is able to drive them away from the coming storm which eventually whisks them away, ending their life.
I really do like these visuals, especially the contrast of everyone in their dirty piecemeal outfits in the real world and the simple plain white clothing in the Allegorical Space where their skin and hair are clean.
Long story short, after a bunch of running around, multiple characters are killed off by The Smoke, and it's revealing that the symbols that Main Girl's been following were merely imprinted on the dial by virtue of the trash she had accidentally sucked up with the device it was in. The collapses her relationship with Main Guy, who was always skeptical, but finally loses faith.
At the same time, the government of the city in which the characters live unveil a "cure" to The Smoke which involves severing the horns on the person's back and filling them with a substance that casts their entire body in a rainbow mosaic and renders them invulnerable to The Smoke.
More and more people redeem tickets in exchange for this procedure, but Main Girl is the most resistant to try it, clearly believing that removing the horns is in some way sacrilegious.
Eventually she finds Main Guy in line to receive the procedure and forces her way ahead of him with his ticket... for some reason that's not entirely clear. Main Guy evidently interrupts the procedure as her horns are eschewing some kind of substance. Main Girl apparently dies, but her camera comes back to life, presenting the images which he had graffitied around town as images in her mind.
THIS, for some reason finally truly summons The Artist... and credits roll.
On one hand, I appreciate that the overall goal of the narrative, summoning The Artist is achieved... but at the same time I'm frustrated by not understanding what was done differently.
Multiple times Main Girl presents images to The Artist, but he doesn't respond, multiple times Main Girl presents music or sound to The Artist, but he doesn't respond. What's so different about Main Guy's artwork compared to Main Girl's artwork, and why the emphasis on sound and music throughout the movie... when it was never necessary to summon him?
That shit just kinda ****ing spoils the ending for me. It might have made a little bit more sense if Main Girl's exposure damaged her hands to such a degree that she simply couldn't communicate well through images... but that wasn't clear at all.
As I said, I like the Allegorical Space and I appreciate all the extra effort they took to flesh out a totally original world with their own currency, food, form of transport, prison system, method of storytelling, etc. etc.... However I will also say that the excessive "style" really does bleed unpleasantly into the realism of the visuals, by which I mean the movie looks tragically like 80-90% of it was filmed on a green screen.
It seems very obvious when a prop is computer-generated, when in the previous movies, special effects were sometimes outright BAD, but at least they were used sparingly.
Here, most of the visual effects are much better overall, but under ordinary lighting conditions they are so ubiquitous that everything but the characters looks incredibly fake.
Select special effects, however, such as the Creation Story animation or Main Guy's uni-goggle seem pretty well done in isolation and definitely communicate that a lot more work was put into this movie compared to the previous two.
As far as the acting is concerned, I really have no complaints. I actually appreciated that each of the characters, despite never speaking, each seem to develop a bit of a personality, and seeing them be saved in the Allegorical Space is also a feel good moment when the hardass is shown to be uncharacteristically vulnerable for once.
That said, I really did not like what passed for "speaking" in this movie. Characters other than Main Girl are clearly able to speak, but this is communicated through a warbly reverb that sounds quite unpleasant, especially when the character is intended to be singing some kind of melody.
There's a lot to cover presentation-wise, so with that said, let's just cover the themes and ideas explored.
This is certainly a religious movie, but perhaps it's the most appreciable kind of religious movie for me. It presents the mythos, that rationalizes the tradition, it serves as the vehicle for the pilgrimage, characters are justifiably skeptical, faith is eventually lost for good reason, and there's even a theme of people casting down their traditions in favor of a progressive and potentially destructive technology... but, perhaps most importantly, the belief was literally true in the first place. There is a God, and he actually appears.
I don't mind that story fundamentally and I understand the analogs to real world religious themes... without it ever preaching about a particular religion, or even religion in general.
I do appreciate the many creative liberties they took by obfuscating technology or handwaving the creation of art. A lot of stuff just happens in this movie, and you just gotta roll with it.
On one hand it doesn't really matter whether Main Girl can basically touch pen to paper and POOF out a drawing, but on the other when we seem to establish that Main Girl can touch Doof Warrior to inexplicably gain the ability to listen to everything except voices(?) and/or play music through his speakers... comes completely out of left field.
This is a plot point that never even comes close to being explained.
Stuff like that, and especially the nonsensical ending definitely hampered my experience, and "I liked it, but..." is certainly a theme in this movie;
The music was good, but not exceptional, and the "voices" sucked.
The visuals were kinda cool, but also gratuitously computer-generated.
The plot was interesting, but literally nothing was preventing this movie from ending in the first few minutes.
I appreciate what it aspired to to, it was a lot more than I expect from movies these days, and arguably the best thing I could say about it is that it kept my attention and so thoroughly subverted my expectations that I never knew what was going to happen next.
Having said that, the whole experience did not quite culminate in the way I would have liked for it to have culminated and I lay most of that blame on the writing.
Nowhere near as good as Ink, but also not as frustrating as The Frame.
Final Verdict: [Okay]
Myth of Man
Sci-Fi Fantasy / Silent / 2025
WHY'D I WATCH IT?
If anybody on this website is going to review this movie on release day, you're damn skippy it's gonna be me.
WHAT'D I THINK? *SPOILERS*
For context, Jamin Winans' first full-length movie, Ink, has been in my Top 10 ever since I've seen it. It is not without it's flaws, which I have happily torn into it for, but it never fails to get me to tear up by the end.
I am the only one to have reviewed it and it is possibly the longest review I have written on this site.
Winans' second movie, The Frame, was a big disappointment by comparison. My review for it was 11 pages long and I sent it directly to the creators. Honestly, I barely remember the movie. The most I can recall is some huge buildup to a character playing the violin and the movie cuts to credits before we hear a damn thing. I hated it.
Regardless, I've enjoyed Winans' shorts and his overall style I find appealing, so I'm certainly on board to see the next thing from him... so long as it's not a ****ing documentary about the impact of social media on kids.
This time around we get another fantasy/sci-fi story, but it's clear this time the budget and ambition were dialed up to 11. We have an entirely original world, with an entirely original mythos, entirely original technology, and the whole thing is told purely through music and imagery because the main character is a deaf mute.
Suffice it to say, I honestly believe this is the most creative movie I've seen in literal years.
But whether or not that creativity pans out to a good movie is another thing entirely.
Because the entire story is told without any words heard or read, I'm going to have to come up with my own terms to describe the plot.
Main Girl works as an artist who is employed to use magical technology to essentially translate her artwork into a movie about this world's Creation Story.
The Creation Story posits the existence of The Artist with a pair of [musical] horns on their back who brings sound and imagery into the world and essentially creates this world's "Adam" before retreating into the sky as a comet. Adam is assailed by an unknown creature and sings out to The Artist who reappears from the comet to save them.
Everyone in the movie shares these horns on their back, but they are never shown to serve any clear purpose.
Every day, an artificial night falls, as a comet, the alleged Artist, crosses the sky, but nearly as often, the world is attacked by red Smoke which dissolves anyone it touches. Exposure to The Smoke is directly correlated to a meter everyone also has on their arm which indicates a sort of Infection Level. Eventually, if someone progresses too far, they simply die.
Main Girl takes up the habit of drawing current and future victims of the Smoke and presenting them to the comet in an effort to summon The Artist to save them. At some point, Main Girl herself is directly exposed to The Smoke, losing her eye and part of her hands in the process and presents her own picture to The Artist.
She even goes so far as to use her work device which translates images to sound, but it sucks up trash and is damaged in the process, losing her her job.
It is only after this, however, that strange symbols are printed to a dial inside of the device and she begins witnessing these symbols appearing over the heads of people singing or producing some sort of sound.
One such person, who we'll call Main Guy, is a graffiti artist who she discovers can suck out the infection to stave off his own death. He also later provides her with a magical camera which projects the images in her head onto a backdrop, finally giving her a clear means of communicating to those around her.
Essentially, the movie follows Main Girl as she attempts to assemble everyone with the observed symbols over their heads in a belief that there is a divine purpose in doing so. Most of the characters are skeptical or don't understand, but as they have various brushes with The Smoke/Infection, Main Girl is able to reach out to them and ground them in some way... though what, if anything, she's able to do is never entirely clear.
The best part about this is what I'll call the "Allegorical Space". Basically, as Main Girl is interacting with The Smoke/Infection, she is portrayed in a world composing of photos, however, unlike herself, everyone else who appears in this world is presented as deaf and blind, and only she is able to drive them away from the coming storm which eventually whisks them away, ending their life.
I really do like these visuals, especially the contrast of everyone in their dirty piecemeal outfits in the real world and the simple plain white clothing in the Allegorical Space where their skin and hair are clean.
Long story short, after a bunch of running around, multiple characters are killed off by The Smoke, and it's revealing that the symbols that Main Girl's been following were merely imprinted on the dial by virtue of the trash she had accidentally sucked up with the device it was in. The collapses her relationship with Main Guy, who was always skeptical, but finally loses faith.
At the same time, the government of the city in which the characters live unveil a "cure" to The Smoke which involves severing the horns on the person's back and filling them with a substance that casts their entire body in a rainbow mosaic and renders them invulnerable to The Smoke.
More and more people redeem tickets in exchange for this procedure, but Main Girl is the most resistant to try it, clearly believing that removing the horns is in some way sacrilegious.
Eventually she finds Main Guy in line to receive the procedure and forces her way ahead of him with his ticket... for some reason that's not entirely clear. Main Guy evidently interrupts the procedure as her horns are eschewing some kind of substance. Main Girl apparently dies, but her camera comes back to life, presenting the images which he had graffitied around town as images in her mind.
THIS, for some reason finally truly summons The Artist... and credits roll.
On one hand, I appreciate that the overall goal of the narrative, summoning The Artist is achieved... but at the same time I'm frustrated by not understanding what was done differently.
Multiple times Main Girl presents images to The Artist, but he doesn't respond, multiple times Main Girl presents music or sound to The Artist, but he doesn't respond. What's so different about Main Guy's artwork compared to Main Girl's artwork, and why the emphasis on sound and music throughout the movie... when it was never necessary to summon him?
That shit just kinda ****ing spoils the ending for me. It might have made a little bit more sense if Main Girl's exposure damaged her hands to such a degree that she simply couldn't communicate well through images... but that wasn't clear at all.
As I said, I like the Allegorical Space and I appreciate all the extra effort they took to flesh out a totally original world with their own currency, food, form of transport, prison system, method of storytelling, etc. etc.... However I will also say that the excessive "style" really does bleed unpleasantly into the realism of the visuals, by which I mean the movie looks tragically like 80-90% of it was filmed on a green screen.
It seems very obvious when a prop is computer-generated, when in the previous movies, special effects were sometimes outright BAD, but at least they were used sparingly.
Here, most of the visual effects are much better overall, but under ordinary lighting conditions they are so ubiquitous that everything but the characters looks incredibly fake.
Select special effects, however, such as the Creation Story animation or Main Guy's uni-goggle seem pretty well done in isolation and definitely communicate that a lot more work was put into this movie compared to the previous two.
As far as the acting is concerned, I really have no complaints. I actually appreciated that each of the characters, despite never speaking, each seem to develop a bit of a personality, and seeing them be saved in the Allegorical Space is also a feel good moment when the hardass is shown to be uncharacteristically vulnerable for once.
That said, I really did not like what passed for "speaking" in this movie. Characters other than Main Girl are clearly able to speak, but this is communicated through a warbly reverb that sounds quite unpleasant, especially when the character is intended to be singing some kind of melody.
There's a lot to cover presentation-wise, so with that said, let's just cover the themes and ideas explored.
This is certainly a religious movie, but perhaps it's the most appreciable kind of religious movie for me. It presents the mythos, that rationalizes the tradition, it serves as the vehicle for the pilgrimage, characters are justifiably skeptical, faith is eventually lost for good reason, and there's even a theme of people casting down their traditions in favor of a progressive and potentially destructive technology... but, perhaps most importantly, the belief was literally true in the first place. There is a God, and he actually appears.
I don't mind that story fundamentally and I understand the analogs to real world religious themes... without it ever preaching about a particular religion, or even religion in general.
I do appreciate the many creative liberties they took by obfuscating technology or handwaving the creation of art. A lot of stuff just happens in this movie, and you just gotta roll with it.
On one hand it doesn't really matter whether Main Girl can basically touch pen to paper and POOF out a drawing, but on the other when we seem to establish that Main Girl can touch Doof Warrior to inexplicably gain the ability to listen to everything except voices(?) and/or play music through his speakers... comes completely out of left field.
This is a plot point that never even comes close to being explained.
Stuff like that, and especially the nonsensical ending definitely hampered my experience, and "I liked it, but..." is certainly a theme in this movie;
The music was good, but not exceptional, and the "voices" sucked.
The visuals were kinda cool, but also gratuitously computer-generated.
The plot was interesting, but literally nothing was preventing this movie from ending in the first few minutes.
I appreciate what it aspired to to, it was a lot more than I expect from movies these days, and arguably the best thing I could say about it is that it kept my attention and so thoroughly subverted my expectations that I never knew what was going to happen next.
Having said that, the whole experience did not quite culminate in the way I would have liked for it to have culminated and I lay most of that blame on the writing.
Nowhere near as good as Ink, but also not as frustrating as The Frame.
Final Verdict: [Okay]