The Creature from Michigan Lake

What do SpongeBob SquarePants, Czech optical-effects master Karel Zeman, and Canadian experimental filmmaker Guy Maddin have in common? On their own, not much. Yet their essence surprisingly converges in the debut of American fantasist Ryland Brickson Cole Tews. The filmmaker didn't reach this point through an enlightened producer - his path was paved by "crashing with relatives" and "making puppy-dog eyes at friends". So he scraped together 7,000 dollars and a crew whose members, rotating in front of and behind the camera, can be counted on both hands.

The Creature from Michigan Lake follows in the footsteps of Larry Blamire and his tributes to classic monster movies, except Tews doesn't draw his style from amateur theatre boards but from the ADHD core of the internet. A tall tale about an eccentric sailor who, with his chaotic crew, sets out to avenge a beast that took his father becomes, in his hands, a Pollock-like explosion of low-budget creativity. The narrative compass spins wildly between all poles of phantasmagoria, and Tews - like the central sea wolf he himself portrays - steers his infectious-madness-fueled film boat into waters of wildly raging imagination. Visual ideas, scriptwriting pirouettes, and both earthy and sophisticated humor come tumbling at breakneck pace.