95/100

"The search for God is absurd?"

"It is if everyone dies alone."

"Does that scare you?"

"I don't want to be alone."

Such a knockout combination of flavors and tones, genres and influences that it's hard to believe how coherent it all is. Portals expand though the screen of The Evil Dead as a heavenly choir soars within the soundscape. Elementary schoolgirls dance seductively in talent shows, taught by the 'teacher's pet' of a spiritual healer with a dark secret. Nightmares intermingle with the sleepy High School environments of endless houses and endless types of people who we've known. It's a movie where 'sparkle motion' is on the same plane of importance as deluded heroism and schizophrenia, and it's all a montage away from tragedy and humor and heartbreak and beauty. Richard Kelly's music choice ties it together into a (seemingly) chemically predetermined bow, as I don't think needle drops have ever been better after this. The theories and mysteries have been depleted by now, but all that's left is that lingering final brushstroke and Kelly's swift containment of the absurd and the homey.

P.S: I find the 'Halloween bike ride' to be beautiful on a level which defies classification. Young adults, growing up, innocence lost, but still clinging to late-night adventures, difference being a shift into an encounter with real danger and genuine despair.

P.P.S: I'm voting for Dukakis.