Rumours

Symbolism is a slippery slope, and at its core Rumours is less allegorical than it is surrealist: What makes it so enjoyable is the way that the characters take even the wackiest developments in stride.

It kind of plays out like a horror melodrama set at Bandcamp.

Hopefully, “Rumours” can kick off a new age of gonzo, let’s-all-laugh-in-fear-together entertainment.

It’s a long and tedious slog to the finish line as we follow a group of paper-thin caricatures who are only mildly interesting and intermittently funny.

“Rumours” slowly becomes the kind of experience willing to subject its polite, well-groomed professional politicians to all sorts of film genres, the more disreputable the better.

Sporadically ingenious, occasionally chilling and entirely bonkers...

… an interesting attempt to take Guy Maddin’s idiosyncratic style and make it more palatable for the mainstream …

Not being familiar with the work of Guy Maddin, I found Rumours to be surprisingly reserved and restrained…well, as restrained as a film that has the aforementioned zombie sex ritual.

Rumours has stereotypes but smartly avoids character clichés (having great actors helps).

It’s like a New Yorker cartoon. And not a good one like one with dogs. It’s more like one where someone smarter than you says “Oh, I get it.” And so you say you do too. But you kinda don’t. And by kinda I mean not at all.