Late winter and early spring are often a time when studios will toss films that aren’t summer blockbusters, four quadrant pleasers, or fall prestige dramas into theaters and hope they stick. Many original sci-fi, action, and horror films rule the box office, especially if the February superhero movie is a bit of a dud like last year’s Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania or Sony’s desperate move to keep their hold on some Marvel cash, Madame Web.
Luckily, it’s also a time for some possible awards darlings. After all, both the Sundance and South by Southwest films can finally start trickling into the theaters to see how they play in limited release with actual audiences. Some of the most inventive films of the festival have an opportunity to pop into theaters and capture a little magic.
This year, a quartet of festival films found distribution and varied wildly in tone, technique, and story. It is always exciting for theaters to show general audiences something slightly different than the usual fare. All four are potential dark horses when it comes to the Best Original Screenplay category.
Problemista, a holdover from 2023, is by beloved comedy writer Julio Torres. It’s inventive and playful; fans of Torres’ strange sense of humor will be immediately satisfied. More importantly, it also touches on the tremendous anxiety immigrants face in the morass that is the U.S. immigration system. Awards bodies tend to support a comedy with a message. Even with that important message, Problemista could be too outlandish even for dark horse status.
Similarly, The American Society of Magical Negroes, written by Kobi Libii, is a film that has a very intriguing concept. A group of Black people are endowed with magical powers in order to try and calm the fears of White people. Unfortunately,there’s also a romantic subplot thrown in. The film tries to balance its message and the chemistry of the two romantic leads and never quite finds its footing. The opposite of Problemista, it is too simple and crowd-pleasing to be an actual dark horse for awards consideration.
A film that is likely the strangest of the year, Sasquatch Sunset, written by David Zellner, has a chance to sneak into the conversation at year’s end. The odd story focuses on a family of sasquatches attempting to survive in a world run by humans. It accomplishes storytelling without dialogue, which, while impressive, will likely hinder it in this category. However, because of the lack of exposition, it may draw attention to the performance of the actors under the makeup. As an outside chance for nominations, it’s a doozy and could be comparable in surprise to “The Fire Inside” as Best Original Song from last year’s nominations.
The most intriguing of all the potential dark horses has to be Love Lies Bleeding, written by Rose Glass and Weronika Tofilska. The screenplay has a little bit of everything. It’s part twisted crime story, combined with both a lesbian romance and a complex father-daughter relationship. It’s rightly getting comparisons to the fantastic work of the Coen brothers for its dark humor and tangled metaphysics. Never count out a head trip of a movie in this category. I just hope it keeps its stamina as it is still very early in the awards year.
The likeliest of the early 2024 releases to make it all the way is Challengers. Written by Justin Kuritzkes, partner of 2023 nominee Celine Song (Past Lives), Challengers is smart, layered, and crackling with sexual chemistry. Maybe the most impressive thing about the screenplay is the creation of Kuritzkes’ characters. There’s the constantly maneuvering Tashi Duncan, the love-sick Art Donaldson, and the roguish Patrick Zweig. They’re characters that defy stereotyping in a game that’s complicated but easily followed back and forth. It’s tense, teasing, and oh-so sexy. It would be surprising if five other films could usurp the prime position Challengers is in. But it is a very long year, so we shall see what summer and beyond has in store.
