Lucid Review (Fantasia 2025)

Surreal and sublime, Lucid projects remnants of a fractured childhood through the kaleidoscope of ’90s art, flashing rays of beauty upon sadness and trauma.

Mia Sunshine’s irritating art professor has given her one week to save her place on the kind of course where group handclaps and synchronised wailing are a thing. Constantly late for her doom job at Bitchin Chckn Mia takes time out from frantically stabbing upholstered furniture and equally frantic masturbation in a kilt, biting a served doll’s arm to seek out a chemical muse.

The drug she ingests, in ill-advised quantities, is supposed to unlock her artistic potential through the control of lucid dreaming. However, it also springs the clasps on her subconscious, exposing her upbringing in the clutches of her emotionally abusive mother.

Ramsey Fendall and Deanna Milligan‘s astonishing smorgasbord of experimentalist filmmaking opens up a delicate netherworld of glimpsed memories and breaking dreams. Brimming with ideas, it’s a stream-of-consciousness collage that feels like leafing through an unearthed scrapbook on LSD.

Shot on a mishmash of 35 and 16mm film, Lucid retains remarkable narrative focus despite its unorthodox structure. Superb editing is the key here, helping the eclectic imagery and disturbing themes bind and flow with a feather-light touch at odds with the film’s rebellious coda.

The retro setting is well-realised, but never dominates as characters drift on screen like Anarchists in Wonderland, in ways and costumes that defy specific decades. The soundtrack is a carefully curated mix of blistering punk, Indie, synth pop, and some live on-set music, reflecting the patchwork ethos of the film. There is even a song embedded in the movie from a fictional folk-rock band, Sweetbird, with whom Mia’s parents were entwined.

Well-known for its pretentious leanings, the ’90s art scene was a veritable outlet village for Emperor’s new clothes. Lucid is wise enough to shine satire upon this while keeping a close eye on its assessment of art as a creative medium immune to expectations. The movie knows it takes more than nailing a dead fish to a canvas to cultivate the connection it craves.

There is a homespun whimsy in much of the DIY design ethos that charms rather than jars, especially when the demons of Mia’s past begin to assume physical form, such as the magnificent hair monster created by cast member Vivian Vanderpuss. 

Lucid thrives on its bone-raw performances, not least from Caitlin Acken Taylor, an actress John Waters would have killed for in his heyday of midnight screenings. It’s a remarkable turn of tenderness and temper tantrums, sensuality and physicality that needs no overblown monologues to lay bare a woman fundamentally fucked-up by rejection.

Also brilliant is Amber Dandelion as the mother responsible for the buried pain. Her vicious mood swings and unforgivable manipulation in the grip of mental illness are heartbreakingly authentic. These disturbing flashbacks are juxtaposed with dreamy cinematography that disguises the spiritual gaslighting. There is real pain and a lack of comprehension in the eyes of young Mia as the woman she idolises blows apart and showers her in shrapnel instead of love.

Lucid doesn’t tie its thematic disclosures together with its art punk ideas in a neat bow. Nor does it attempt to be dishonest regarding its spiky agenda. Instead, it allows the talent involved the freedom to express their identity through art, thus mirroring the film’s core premise.

Paradoxical in the extreme, Lucid is messy yet measured, disordered yet direct and dangerous but delicate.

★★★★

World premiere at Fantasia 21st July 2025 / Georgia Acken, Caitlin Acken Taylor, Amber Dandelion, John Luna, Vivian Vanderpuss / Dir: Ramsey Fendall, Deanna Milligan / Raven Banner