Creative process comes into focus in dreamy '90s-set punk horror film Lucid

In the new movie Lucid, Caitlin Acken Taylor stars as Mia, an art student that takes a mysterious and trippy drug to help her overcome a debilitating creative block. Photo by Sublunar Films /Sublunar Films

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People often say travel is a true test of a relationship. But filmmaker Ramsey Fendall offers another compatibility litmus test.

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“Try making a movie together, because that’s really one of the most arduous things you could do,” said Fendall, who co-directed and co-wrote the feature film Lucid with his partner Deanna Milligan.

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The pair, who call Victoria home, had known each other for a few years before they began shooting Lucid in 2023. Once on the Vancouver Island-shot film their relationship turned romantic. The film plays at the VIFF Centre on May 29 to 31 and June 2 and 4. The May 29 and June 4 screenings will be followed by a Q&A with filmmakers.

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“We were friends. And through this crazy filmmaking journey, we just fell in love and wow, discovered that we can work together under the most trying of conditions,” said Milligan, a veteran Canadian actor with a long list of film and TV credits.

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On set, the pair have a defined way of working together.

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“The way we describe it is Deanna is the heart, and I am the eyes, and that’s sort of how we proceed,” said Fendall, the cinematographer on Lucid.

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Ramsey Fendall and Deanna Milligan were friends before they co-directed and co-wrote the movie Lucid, but once they dove into the production their partnership expanded from creative to romantic. ‘Through this crazy filmmaking journey, we just fell in love and wow, discovered that we can work together under the most trying of conditions,’ said Milligan. Photo by Sublunar Films /Sublunar Films

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Set in the gloriously iPhone-free mid-1990s, the psychological drama/horror focuses on Mia (Caitlyn Acken Taylor), an art student who is on the verge of being expelled due to a creative block she just can’t seem to get around.

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Desperate for inspiration and a creative reset, Mia ingests a magical, mystical and maybe a tad malevolent substance. Under the heading of ‘be careful what you wish for,’ the creative spark comes with a dark dip into the subconscious, where Mia is forced to revisit her rocky childhood.

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Lucid is a dreamy, art-punk trip — literally and figuratively — that, at times, feels like it’s covered in a gauzy scrim that helps to heighten the wooziness of Mia’s creative world.

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“We very much wanted the whole film to be beautiful, but also to have this very handmade feel to it,” said Fendall. “There’s actually a coherent visual language for everything that was happening. It had to feel like she had made it; it had to feel beautiful, but also because she had made it, it had to have a kind of messiness, kind of untidiness. And that was really, really important.”

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The punk horror film Lucid focuses on a young art school student, played by Caitlin Acken Taylor, struggling to break through a creative block while battling dark memories from her past. Photo by Sublunar Films /Sublunar Films

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Shot in 35 millimetre and Super 8, Lucid began life as a short film in 2019. In 2021, the film got into Montreal’s Fantasia Film Festival’s shorts-to-features lab and that got the feature ball rolling.

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Unsurprisingly, the going was challenging. To help make the film, Milligan and Fendall roped in friends and family, including Milligan’s two actor daughters, Violet and Josephine Gaffney, to work on the project.

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“Our crew is tiny, really small,” said Milligan. “Our film is super-collaborative in every way.”

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An example of that collaborative spirit was Acken Taylor chipping in on the set design side of things.

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“All the painting on the walls, the writing on the walls — a huge amount of that was her work,” said Fendall. “It’s incredibly important to trust the people that you’re with, and that can be a hard thing, because obviously, as a director, you want to keep a fairly tight hold on the reins.