The Fits Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		3.0

The Fits Blu-ray Movie Review

Hysteria

Reviewed by Michael Reuben September 20, 2016

The Fits is an oblique film about an obscure subject. Co-writer and director Anna Rose Holmer comes from a documentary background, and her instinct is to position the camera and let events unfold before it, allowing the viewer (or perhaps it would be more accurate to say "forcing the viewer") to discover what is happening onscreen. It's a risky approach, and Holmer has added an additional challenge by adopting the viewpoint of her protagonist, an eleven-year-old girl who sees a lot but says very little. Throughout The Fits, Holmer rigorously limits the viewer's access to information so that you don't see or hear anything more than the precocious child who is fascinated by what the older kids are doing even though she doesn't understand it. Voices are muffled, and views are obscured by obstacles. By the end, you know you've seen something, but you're not sure what it is.

"The fits" is the informal name given to a mysterious malady that descends on participants at an urban community center where kids and teens train for sports and a majorette dance team rehearses for an upcoming competition. (Pay close attention, and you'll learn that the community center is located in Cincinnati, but the locale has no special significance.) All of the afflicted are girls or young women who suffer sudden seizures of shaking, moaning and swooning. City officials initially suspect water contamination, and they instruct patrons of the community center to drink only bottled water while tests are conducted. In the meantime, however, fear has been replaced by fascination, as social groupings are reordered according to who has experienced "the fits" and who has not.

All of this is presented through the eyes and ears of eleven-year-old Toni (newcomer Royalty Hightower), who spends her days at the community center helping her brother, Jermaine (Da'Sean Minor), do maintenance and learning boxing in her spare time. After watching the Lionnesses Dance Team in rehearsal, Toni is intrigued by their drills and joins the team as a junior member, along with another girl her age, Beezy (Alexis Neblett). As the pair of friends explores their new-found activity, "the fits" descends upon the team, beginning with its captain—and the mystery begins.

Holmer shoots The Fits in extended takes, taking full advantage of young Royalty Hightower's instinctive rapport with the camera, which makes Toni a potentially intriguing character. However, The Fits suffers from a fault common to novice filmmakers, which is a failure of exposition. If you listen to the Blu-ray commentary and read the interview and director's statement at The Fits' official website, it becomes clear that Holmer and her collaborators see deep significance in the events they have recorded, but they have neglected to build the narrative bridge that will grant viewers access to their insights. An effective film shouldn't require an instruction manual, but The Fits doesn't begin to make sense until you read Holmer's explanation of what she wanted to accomplish:

At its heart, The Fits is a meditation on movement as seen from the perspective of adolescent girls. The film explores the particularly young female phenomenon of mass hysteria, also known as mass psychogenic illness. The rapid spread of symptoms affects members of a cohesive group whereby physical ills have no corresponding organic cause. The Fits juxtaposes the precise, powerful, and intentional movements of drill with subconscious, spontaneous, and uncontrolled movements of collective hysterics.

If Holmer were making a documentary about an actual occurrence of "psychogenic illness", her observational style (which she calls "vérité filmmaking") might be effective, but even a documentary requires narration, intertitles or interviews to supply context and explanation. Fiction has similar requirements, which Holmer has consciously opted to ignore. The result is a seemingly random compilation that leaves the viewer struggling to understand why we're witnessing these particular events. You watch The Fits waiting for a story to begin—and you're still waiting when the credits roll.

The Fits Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Fits was shot on the Arri Amira by cinematographer Paul Yee, who, like director Holmer, comes from a documentary background. The image on Oscilloscope Labs' 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray reflects the usual virtues of digital capture, with superior sharpness and detail and an absence of noise, interference or artifacts. The film's palette is naturalistic but uses splashes of bright primary colors for visual variety, with emphasis on the red, white and blue of the community center and the dance team's uniforms. Black levels and contrast appear to be accurate. The Fits has been mastered at a high average bitrate of 29.88, with a capable encode.

The Fits Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Fits offers a choice between 2.0 and 5.1 soundtracks, both in lossless formats. The Blu-ray defaults to the PCM 2.0 track, but the DTS-HD MA 5.1 can be selected from the "Set Up" menu. The sound mix is as deliberate as the photography, rigorously limiting the dialogue and effects to the perspective of its young heroine. The style is established in the opening scene, where Toni is counting out her sit-ups, and her words are the only intelligible element of the mix, cutting through a cacophony of other athletes engaged in a variety of exercises. Much of the dialogue that Toni overhears, especially among the Lioness members, is muffled and impossible to make out, a choice that director Holmer confirms in the commentary was deliberate. Given Holmer's insistence on "vérité filmmaking", one would expect the soundtrack to lack any scoring, but The Fits has an expressionistic score by the team of Danny Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans (The Gift), which has been carefully blended with the environmental ambiance.

The Fits Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Commentary with Writer/Director Anna Rose Holmer, Writer/Produce Lisa Kjerulff and Writer/Editor Saela Davis: The three collaborators provide a nuts-and-bolts account of the film's production, pointing out technical challenges and identifying dialogue and behavior that grew out of rehearsals and workshops.



• Presenting Royalty Hightower (An On-Set Interview) (1080p; 1.78:1; 4:44): An interview with the film's young star, who says she's not at all like her character.



• Dreams Come True (Q-Kidz On-Set) (1080p; 1.78:1; 11:41): Q-Kidz is the Cincinnati-based majorette drill team that supplied many of the film's performers. This featurette includes interviews with founder Marquicia Jones-Woods and her twin daughters, Mariah and Chariah Jones, who are the group's choreographers. Cast members are also interviewed.



• Outtakes Compilation (1080p; 1.78:1; 4:34): A combination of flubs and on-set clowning.



• Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 2.35:1; 1:22): The trailer relies heavily on atmospheric scoring and quotations from favorable reviews.



• Oscilloscope Trailers: In addition to those listed below, the disc plays a general Oscilloscope trailer at startup.
• Treeless Mountain
• The Wonders

The Fits Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Fits was obviously made by talented people who take their work seriously, but it's an insular creation guarded by formidable barriers to entry. Not every director has (or needs) the popular touch required for crowd-pleasing mass entertainment, but there has to be some allowance for viewers who aren't part of the inner circle that already knows and understands what a filmmaker is trying to convey. Oscilloscope's Blu-ray is a fine presentation, but I can only recommend The Fits as a curiosity.