{"id":21669,"date":"2016-07-30T23:02:15","date_gmt":"2016-07-31T03:02:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=21669"},"modified":"2020-07-29T11:12:11","modified_gmt":"2020-07-29T15:12:11","slug":"the-alchemist-cookbook-2016-fantasia-international-film-festival-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2016\/07\/30\/the-alchemist-cookbook-2016-fantasia-international-film-festival-2016\/","title":{"rendered":"The Alchemist Cookbook (2016) [Fantasia International Film Festival 2016]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"alchemist\"<\/a>A man trying to survive in a shack in the woods plays with alchemy to discover an ancient secret to a better life.\u00a0 Inadvertently, he summons a dangerous being who doesn\u2019t take too kindly to his dealings. The Alchemist cookbook is written and directed by Joel Potrykus who is known for independent horror films shot in Michigan and who considers his style in the vein of Jim Jarmusch which is something each viewer can judge for themselves, but this reviewer did not really see that.<\/p>\n

Here he crafts a fairly slow boil of a film.\u00a0 It starts with an alchemy cooking sequence set to a great track, giving the impression that it might be an upbeat, fast moving film, but it soon becomes clear that the lead, Sean, is a paranoid man playing with forces he doesn\u2019t fully understand.\u00a0 Unfortunately, past that opening scene, the film feels slow and like it might need some extra oomph or perhaps to be edited differently.\u00a0 It\u2019s not boring but it\u2019s not enthralling either.<\/p>\n

The cast for this small budget is, well, small.\u00a0 The lead of Sean is played by Ty Hickson who does great as the paranoid, perhaps desperate, man trying his hand at alchemy.\u00a0 His performance here is good and worth seeing and he proves he can carry a complete movie on his own as the only other actor has only a few scenes and those scenes are always with him.\u00a0 In the only other human role in the film is Amari Cheaton as Cortez a typical gangbanger who tries to help his friend Sean while also getting himself into trouble.\u00a0 His performance feels more exaggerated and caricatured while less on point than Ty Hickson\u2019s.\u00a0 The last cast member listed is Fiji as Kaspar (the cat), as is usually the case with cats, he does a fabulous job while remaining rather nonchalant about the whole thing.<\/p>\n

The film has some nice bits of science alchemy and some good effects.\u00a0 The last third does amp up the horror factor and what can be seen is well done and executed.\u00a0 These special effects are by Jeffery Husselman with visual effects by Scott Baisden and Daniel Falicki.<\/p>\n

Also worth noting are the cinematography and the soundtrack.\u00a0 The cinematography by Adam J. Minnick does a great job at making all outdoors images feel desolate in their settings while the indoors shots feel cramped to go with small shack the lead lives in.\u00a0 This adds to the atmosphere here and is very well done.<\/p>\n

The soundtrack for this film is mostly provided by way of an old tape deck that the lead character uses.\u00a0 The song choices and what is fast forwarded tell a lot about the character, which makes him feel real, more like the crazy, paranoid version of someone every viewer knows.\u00a0 His musical choices also reflect his internal turmoil, by letting him \u201cchoose\u201d those songs, something so few films do.<\/p>\n

The Alchemist cookbook is not a bad film but it has issues with pacing and with sections of the story feeling like filler.\u00a0 The acting by the lead is good and he carries the film well.\u00a0 The music is his best supporting character, but it\u2019s not enough to make this reviewer want to see it again or be able to fully recommend it.<\/p>\n

Fantasia International Film Festival runs from July 14th<\/sup> until August 3rd<\/sup>, 2016.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A man trying to survive in a shack in the woods plays with alchemy to discover an ancient secret to a better life.\u00a0 Inadvertently, he summons a dangerous being who doesn\u2019t take too kindly to his dealings. The Alchemist cookbook is written and directed by Joel Potrykus who is known for independent horror films shot […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":21670,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2497,1284,12],"tags":[50,111,259,302,367,477],"class_list":["post-21669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fantasia-fest","category-festivalsevents","category-movie-reviews","tag-a","tag-arthouse","tag-dark-comedy","tag-drama","tag-foreign","tag-horror"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21669"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21669\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21671,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21669\/revisions\/21671"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}