Writer/director/producer Sean Abley’s dark science fiction flick Socket is hitting the film festival circuit now. The world premiere was at the Philadelphia International Gay and Lesbian Film Fest. It is screening tonight at the Outfest 07 Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Film Festival.
Although Socket will probably eventually appear under the Gay & Lesbian heading in my Netflix account, it is a straight up genre flick and the genre is psychological horror/dark SF. The basic storyline is surgeon gets hit by lightening. Cute intern in the hospital he is treated at hooks him up with a support group for people who develop cravings for electricity, after events like being struck by lightening. They start a romantic relationship and, of course, it being a spooky movie, everything goes horribly awry.
The surgeon’s cravings for electricity require a more and more powerful jolt for him to get his fix. He figures out how to implant sockets in his and his lover’s wrists. This leads to both a nifty vampire subtext and entertainingly blatant metaphors for things like meth and cocaine-fueled bathroom sex, which are the sorts of topics most amusingly approached in metaphor. The movie is partly a meditation on the nature of addiction, albeit perhaps a tongue-in-cheek meditation.
The best part of the film is indubitably Sean Abley’s masterful ear for simultaneously believable and humorous dialogue. The characters banter with one another in a lighthearted way which puts a smile on the viewer’s face and feels tremendously real, like they are actual sympathetic people you could know in real life. It is pretty rare that I see a movie where the characters are at all recognizable from my own experience, so I really love this aspect. Cute naked vanilla boys also a plus.
Check out the trailer below and, if you are in Los Angeles, stop by Outfest tonight.
