ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Joseph Perry writes for the film websites Gruesome Magazine, The Scariest Things, Horror Fuel and Diabolique Magazine; for the film magazines Phantom of the Movies’ VideoScope and Drive-In Asylum; and for the pop culture websites When It Was Cool and Uphill Both Ways. He is also one of the hosts of When It Was Cool’s exclusive Uphill Both Ways podcast and can occasionally be heard as a cohost on Gruesome Magazine’s Decades of Horror: The Classic Era podcast.

A film with a perfectly fitting title, writer/director/star Wendy McColm’s Fuzzy Head is a surreal genre-film meditation on lifelong trauma that began with childhood abuse. 

Insomniac Marla (McColm) may or may not be interacting with others, viewers may or may not be witnessing actual events or imagined ones from her life, and the nonlinear framework of the film makes things even less clear as the young woman tries to piece together whether she murdered her mother, who once made her walk on broken glass as a childhood punishment. But if things were clear to us, we couldn’t sympathize with Marla’s plight as much as we do — and hers is the type of character, thanks to McColm’s work behind the camera and in front of it, that we ultimately want to see come out of everything okay.

McColm is great in the role, with her character going through the wringer, and her supporting cast — particularly Alicia Witt as Marla’s mother — is solid throughout. If you enjoy symbolism and dream interpretation in your cinematic choices, Fuzzy Head should keep you busy. There’s more than a little David Lynch influence at play here, along with influences from other filmmakers, but McColm’s film is its own unique work, boasting plenty of oddness and intriguing visuals.

Fuzzy Head is a heavy, heady, often uncanny character study with thriller elements that should leave viewers with plenty to chew on long after the ending credits roll.

Fuzzy Head, from Gravitas Ventures, is currently available as a streaming release.