If Timothy S. Leary and Kenneth Anger made Midsommar … well, who the hell knows what that would turn out to resemble. But I reckon Pater Noster and the Mission of Light, “an underground film by Christopher Bickel,” comes closest in cosmic proximity. Nothing else need apply.
Alt-AF record store worker Max (first-timer Adara Starr) comes across a vinyl title so scarce, it’s worth a grand: “It’s this weird hippie psych record. This commune put it out in the early ’70s. Rare as shit.” Acting on a tip, she finds a thick stack of four of their five LPs at a thrift store; the missing album, with a rumored five-copy pressing, is supposedly cursed.
One mysterious phone call later, Max and four friends accept an invitation to visit the commune, Wunderlawn. It’s run by spiritual leader and titular alchemist Pater Noster (Mike Amason, Bickel’s Bad Girls). He’s the kind of unkempt wack job whose followers get hallucinogenic powder blown onto their faces — and, um, into other places.
The trippiness that follows is so immersive, it feels as if some particles of that substance may have blown through the screen and up your sinuses. That not everybody will make it out alive is a foregone conclusion; that you’re ill-prepared for how that all happens is nearly as certain.
Don’t let the initial High Fidelity in-store shenanigans fool you, much as the montage of customers’ stupid questions may try, but this is one wild occult pic. Shot in South Carolina for the price of a used car, Mission of Light finds Bickel carrying over Bad Girls’ propulsive energy, but now it aims squarely to shock. Once that starts happening, his performers’ acting deficits shrink.
The situations Max and friends find themselves in are unsettling enough; add the discomforting soundtrack and we’re pushed, if not shoved, into “Should we even be watching this?” territory — not in the negative “this sucks” way, but with the unshakable feeling that Bickle tapped into Genuine Evil to fuel the frames. —Rod Lott
