Corrigan steals the show as Duck the Cop. I remember in Austin re-watching him in Illtown every day for a week, running up a huge late fee at I Love Video. He is the salt on the fries; he makes everything he appears in taste even better. The biggest performance here is, of course, by Curtis-Hall, who brings a new intensity of cold desperation to the face of doom he wears. His turn alone is reason enough to hunt this one down.
Rockwell seems to be reaching high with The Projectionist, almost treading into putting Bergman-like introspective drama into a “doomed man” film noir scenario. While ambitious, the end results are mixed. Instead of the drama enriching the thriller plot line, the story momentum feels uneven, with slowdowns and speedups whenever the genre switches. The frame also switches aspect ratio from wide screen to extra wide screen constantly, back and forth. This intrigued me, as I started to keep track of when it would happen. I was looking for something that would tip me off to what the extra-wide frame scenes meant. The most plausible explanation was that those wide scenes were the actions that were filtered through Sully’s memories as scenes from a film.
“Corrigan steals the show as Duck the Cop.”
After exhaustive study, I have concluded that the aspect ratio change has no plausible meaning or pattern that the viewer can follow to achieve any added level of appreciation. It just comes on and off at random, like a dying fluorescent light bulb no one cares to change. It questions why the filmmaker would bring a toy like this to the party, just to leave it in the box. Also, I have concerns about the drop’s shallow depth during the big reveal. The ugly truth was pretty dire, but not anywhere near as evil as it could have been.
There is also an unavoidable tone problem with the scene where the guy’s tongue gets cut out, fried up, and eaten by a group of fellas. Just like the eye-gouging scene in Casino, there is no way this isn’t totally f*****g hilarious. Any gravity of the violence evaporates as instantly as it would if the sound of squeaky clown shoes were added. Despite these quibbles, The Projectionist has superb acting, looks great, and hits that dreary spot right between the eyes. It is worth some of that time you have that is rapidly disappearing into the fog.
The Projectionist screened at the 2026 Slamdance Film Festival.
"…has superb acting, looks great, and hits that dreary spot right between the eyes."
