A man in his thirties decided to relive his glory days of high school while dealing with adult responsibilities and type 1 diabetes.
Written and directed by Mitchell Stafiej, The Diabetic just did not work for this reviewer. All films coming from Fantasia are usually highly vetted and the selection is careful and deliberate, but this one is a complete miss. The story is fairly plain and turns into a dull bore fairly early on, leading to it becoming a chore to watch through to its end after 1h34min. The film starts off with the decision to make this as if it were shot back in possibly the 1990s and then it seems like the direction decided to use more damage on the images than even necessary in any situation, making it a film that is absolutely not agreeable to watch. This may have been the point here, to give it style or something more, but it feels more desperate than anything else. Many decisions like this and keeping the film fairly dark make this an odd choice of a film to “enjoy”.
With the tagline “[a] mumble-core for invisible disability”, the film sets itself up for a style that may be what is on screen here, but it also sets itself up for turning off a wide range of audience with its claim to mumble-core. The idea to explore invisible disability is fantastic, but here it’s so secondary to the rest of the story that it’s not exactly making a point. The film misses a chance to make the disability secondary to living life to the fullest or to show how it affect people. Here, the type 1 diabetes feels like an afterthought or something just used as a crutch for the film, and possibly for the lead.
With all that said, let’s look at the other aspects of the film starting with the acting. The cast is listed with a total of 4 people in IMDB and a few more on the actual film. The lead here is James Watts as Alek, the diabetic of the title. His work is decent in that he plays this character as someone you wouldn’t want to spend time with. His work here sells the loneliness and the disagreeable side of Alek, but not a whole lot of redeeming qualities which may be in part due to the writing and directing. Playing his friend Matthew is Travis Cannon who gives a performance that feels very much like watching the movie does. He’s there, he’s along for the ride, but he’s not all that excited about it or even interested all that much in Alek’s life. He’s there because he has to be. The rest of the cast does decent here, nothing groundbreaking, but nothing horrible either.
The Diabetic is film that wants to be something, but ends up getting in its own way with the chosen style and how the whole film comes together. This is a dark, depressing piece of filmmaking, something that can be oddly hypnotizing at times, but here it becomes something for which is end is hoped for much earlier than it should be.
Fantasia International Film Festival 2022 runs from July 14th to August 3rd, 2022.