Bananahead (2024)

Selected to screen at the 2024 HollyShorts Film Festival, director Christopher Greenslate’s “Bananahead” is an unnerving and well told tale about legacy and impostor syndrome. It’s very much a horror movie, but it’s also a very stark movie about hitting a bar that someone previously left and a lot of what they can leave behind after they have gone. Sally Maersk is a stunner in the role as Andi Sanger, a young performer who gives herself the inherent pressure of taking on a role in the adaptation in her mom’s best selling book “Bananahead.”

Andi auditions for the lead role of Christine, something she hopes will deliver a buzz filled jump start to her career, “The daughter of the disappeared writer as the star.” But then she finds a key to a locked room, where she sees what her future could hold; the gilded life she’s always wanted. However, she’s also unlocked a haunting legacy, a psychodrama wherein she’s the lead, and she may not survive.

Director Greenslate is very good in deriving considerable tension as well as transforming Andi’s entire task in to something that that could prove to be incredible or downright destructive. Star Maersk is able to get in to the skins of various characters, all the while conveying the daunting task of living up to this template that is almost unparalleled. Andi is a girl who, whether she realizes or not, is putting herself in to this box.

And she’s becoming so much more someone that has to submit to standard preceded by the women before her. It’s a daunting concept, but one that comes with success. What’s uncertain is if Andi can withstand what comes after success, and whether or not the pressure alleviates as she gets older. Can she have romantic success, personal success, and professional success? Or will one have to be sacrificed? Christopher Greenslate brings a lot of insight in to the topic offering a well made horror movie that spoke waves about performing and legacy.