New Strains

New Strains is Sleeping with the Enemy meets The Stepford Wives without the technology, obvious abuse, or movie stars. Instead of a fastidious neat freak, the husband is a performative health protocol zealot.

As an art piece, or perhaps a time capsule, the project succeeds. As a film, it barely rises to the occasion.

Artemis Shaw and Prashanth Kamalakanthan make inventive use of vintage lo-fi video technology in this slight but charming pandemic rom-com

A tribute to Kamalakanthan and Shaw’s love, and treatise on the elastic limits of cinema. These two quite literally had a camcorder and a dream. Now they’re proud parents of one of the best films of the Covid era.

New Strains doesn't only make you take sides between the sometimes ugly coping mechanisms of Kallia and Ram--it also reopens barely-healed wounds you might still be nursing...

Feels like a nightmarish chore to sit through, rather than something of a reflective piece for something we all collectively experienced.

A vibrantly contoured alternative to what could have been, in lesser hands, an exercise in dour claustrophobia.