It is low budget? Yes. But is it wildly ambitious and creative with its execution and how it approaches a typical story structure? Yes it sure is. What it manages to do right it does it very well. Plus I'm always a sucker for a good Lubbock, Texas shout-out! The montages are both intense yet sentimental. It has a very definite style and feels like it is influenced by something but for the life of me I cannot figure out what. That is an accomplishment in and of itself, because how can something be influenced seemingly by itself? Who knows? I don't know, but I like it. The story is somewhere between obsession and mysterious circumstance mixed in with a mental collapse.
The pacing is incredibly unique, you never know what is going to happen next. It keeps you on your toes. Along with an excellent use of soundtrack the camera seems to me to move just when I wanted it too yet without feeling redundant like someone just went through the motion of filming proper coverage of the scene to have options in editing. A great example of this, no spoilers, is a tense scene near the end that builds with the hypnotic beat keeping focus on one static long shot for an intense build, the scene breaks up into a completely different direction than you expect, the characters reactions perhaps real in an unexpected sort of way, then it goes somewhere else completely and finally is all fizzled out. Yet it all somehow works... for the most part.
The acting is not the best in places but in other places it is fine. Some scenes seem very unnatural (like the threesome, I'm real life she would've stop it and went "wait a second, ago on earth is this old lady") but the movie always plays it safe when it comes to how far each scene goes. There are excellent montages and a surprisingly good soundtrack of low-cost songs that fit very nice with the style and add to some truly incredible moments.
Overall the movie is very inconsistent, with a few flaws that are hard to overlook but it is well worth it if you are looking for something different. I would definitely recommend it as something new and interesting to sink into for an hour and 40 minutes. Don't regret it, just enjoy the movie.
