The Scary of Sixty-First

Twentysomething New Yorkers Addie and Noelle can’t believe their luck when they find an apartment in their price range in Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Of course, there’s a catch, and it’s not the food left to rot in the cupboard or the blood-stained mattresses. As they soon learn, the flat used to belong to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein – and absolutely nothing good can come from staying there, stewing in the paranoiac, malevolent doom he left behind.

While Hunter Zimny’s cinematography is reminiscent of many erotic thrillers from the 1970s, the film The Scary of Sixty-First shares the most connective tissue to is Eyes Wide Shut. With entire sets constructed to resemble scenes from Stanley Kubrick’s swansong, it’s no surprise director Dasha Nekrasova has stated that the two films share a “cinematic universe” of sorts. The overt erotic menace of the film is highlighted by the giallo-esque frenzy of colour in key scenes throughout. Shot on 16mm, Scary is a tribute to film movements of years gone by, while simultaneously tackling very contemporary subject matter.

“Equal parts ’70s-style paranoia thriller, Polanski-infused apartment horror, “Eyes Wide Shut” homage, and empathetic critical commentary on the conspiracy theories craze, this hallucinatory pastiche is even more than the sum of its cinematically riveting parts.” ~Christian Blauvelt, IndieWire

“A brash, gutsy, morbidly funny first feature from actor-filmmaker-podcaster Dasha Nekrasova, it runs on a premise that could have been written as a dare, or a prank.” ~Guy Lodge, Variety