The popular idiom “Many hands make light work,” first stated by John Heywood, is incredibly true, especially when working toward the same goal. Professional and large or amateur and small (or some combination), all film productions have some kind of crew working together to bring a vision to life. They’re the blue-collar workers, those who do the rigging, the costumes, the set building, the makeup, and far more. Each member of the crew operates together with the same goal of making a vision realized. Having its world premiere is one such project, Mysterious Behaviors, the creation of 17 co-directors/co-writers within various departments of Tulane University who delve into the realm of interstellar life to examine humanity. While the film falls into a variety of expected topics and tropes and does not always successfully dig as deeply as it attempts to, the collective work is a promising start for those in front and behind the cameras.
As part of their intergalactic education, Orion (internally narrated throughout by A.K. Barlow and first performed by Maggie Babin) comes to Earth to learn about the comparatively under-developed civilization. In order to receive course credit for their work, they must embed themselves with humans and opts to do so as a college student. Taking on multiple forms and engaging in a variety of situations, Orion learns what it means (some of the good; some of the bad) to be human while trying to maintain distance from their helicopter mother (primarily played by Ira Anderson and Sarah Nansubuga).
Mysterious Behaviors sets the tone super quickly and maintains it fairly well throughout. From the jump, the narrator explains what the situation is while the initial credits make a point to address that the central character of Orion will be played by multiple people. Of course, Mysterious Behaviors isn’t the first film to opt for such a thing. Face/Off (1997) features actors John Travolta and Nicolas Cage swapping roles; The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009) stars Colin Farrell, Jude Law, and Johnny Depp stepping in for Heath Ledger after the actor passed away during filming; and Freaky (2020) features actors Kathryn Newton and Vince Vaughn body-swapping. These are modern examples, of course, and not a total exploration of the tactic, but what Mysterious does is far more akin to Parnassus in that each actor after Babin is not taking on a new personality in the process, but bringing themselves to what Babin starts. Each actor may look, sound, and move differently, but their homogeny is maintained through the quite literal response to near every interaction Orion has. As Orion jumps from one situation to another (getting acclimated to student life, roommates, finances, social life, and hooking up), the audience never gets the sense that the segments were created in isolation from each other as the character arc and the execution of the role harmonize over the 90-minute runtime.
Maggie Babin as Orion in MYSTERIOUS BEHAVIOURS. Photo courtesy of New Orleans Film Festival.
What’s particularly impressive is that, based on the credits for the film, the whole of Mysterious was a series of vignettes strung together, each portion directed and written by a different individual, sometimes with these creatives also contributing across segments so that the director might be the writer or performer of a different segment. The opening credits do make it clear that the film is a group project, but no one could possibly expect so many different voices to craft a cohesive project like this, making the overall consistency throughout the film to be a marvel. Hat tip to whomever designed Orion’s mom in her original form and gave the performer the pseudonym “Klatu” in the credits — you’re a nerd after my own heart. Much like the original Klaatu in The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), the point of Mysterious is for an alien to engage with humanity, not in a bid to see if they are ready to join other intergalactic worlds, but to learn about them to better understand how they function. If one considers how things went for the original Klaatu, Orion’s mom’s hesitation about her studies, even going so far as to mock them as unhelpful in her life, makes sense, though it’s likely just a joke about how some parents don’t understand a child’s special interests, an element this film makes universal.
There’s a lot of thoughtful things like this throughout Mysterious and some elements that this reviewer is far too removed from college life to understand. What is certain, though, is that the writers of this project wanted to explore aspects of humanity like love and sex (the healthy and unhealthy aspects of modern living) in such a way as to ensure the audience understands that fluidity isn’t just an alien concept. Humans have the capacity for love and sexual interest beyond gender norms and the notion that Orion would explore some of this isn’t treated as some transgression or fetish; rather, Orion’s journey is one of experimentation, sure, but with respect to each individual as a person. Where the film falters in this aspect is where it incorporates a public violation of privacy and simply changes Orion without delving further into this powerful aspect of what humans go through in the digital age. In particular, it’s a bit odd that most of Orion’s forms are white-passing, but the one who gets violated is Black. Or that, in one story, someone who Orion unfortunately betrays is, themselves, Black, creating an unintentional pattern of violence against Black characters that doesn’t befall the rest. Given the sheer number of people working on the project, this likely isn’t a purposeful choice, but it’s one that’s difficult to ignore once noticed, especially when these violations aren’t fully explored in how they impact Orion in the first scenario and how they impact humanity in the second. The overall story is hampered by such shortcomings.
Having made several student films in undergrad, lost mostly to time as the VHS containing them for class died upon final review, there’s nothing easy about making a film, let alone when there’s a number of stewards developing the project. Yet, Mysterious Behaviors is not only a cohesive work, it’s a compelling one. The conclusions it draws and the narrative’s climax are fairly expected within the familiar structure, but the journey to get there is full of enough twists and turns to keep one rooting for Orion throughout. If nothing else, this is a strong debut for a number of creatives potentially beginning careers in an industry that often forgets that every single film released is a group project, no matter whose name is at the helm.
Screening during New Orleans Film Festival 2024.
For more information, head to the official New Orleans Film Festival 2024 Mysterious Behaviors webpage.
Final Score: 3.5 out of 5.
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Categories: In Theaters, Reviews, streaming
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