My Name Is 'A' by Anonymous — My Name Is 'A' by Anonymous (DVD)
My Name Is 'A' by Anonymous is a 2010 teen crime drama, which shifts liberally between brain-numbing vapidity & deeply troubling behaviour. The film blends cinema vertia, found footage, and low-key artiness with a structure that drifts in & out of its loose plot. Here from Wild Eye Raw’s series is a release of the film, taking in three different versions of the film, and a few other things.
My Name Is 'A' by Anonymous is from the year 2012- it had a cost of just $300, and was shot over four days. It’s directed by and co-written by Canoga Park, California-born Shane Ryan-Reid. Between the mid-90s and the present day, he has an impressive sixty-two directorial credits- taking in five features, with the remainder being made up of shorts & anthologies. The full-length films move between thriller Big Boobs, Blonde Babes, Bad Blood (2006), street-based teen drama The Girl Who Wasn’t Lost (2011), but he is probably most known for his troubling sexualized Faux Snuff trilogy- Amateur Porn Star Killer (2006), Amateur Porn Star Killer 2 (2008), and Amateur Porn Star Killer 3: The Final Chapter(2009).
The film is roughly based on/influenced by the Murder of Elizabeth Olten, a Missouri nine-year-old who was murdered by her fifteen-year-old neighbour in 2009. As mentioned earlier, the film has a decidedly loose/ often drifting structure, which of course plays into the boredom, lack of focus, and hopelessness in the lives of small-town American teens in the 2000s.
It runs for around one and a half hours, focusing on two main sets of characters who are kept apart until towards the end of the film. We have the rather bossy/ lairy Alyssa (Katie Noname), her nine-year-old brother Joseph (Joseph Marsh), and her friend The Sidekick (Demi Baumann). Then there is The Performer( Teona Dolnikova) a slightly older teen who has dreams of being a pop singer, and her around ten-year-old sister Elizabeth (Kaliya Skye).
As the film unfolds, we move from moments of vapid banter/ aimless messing around, onto much more troubling behaviour- like self-harm & bulimia vomiting. Mixed in with this, we have disturbing/ half-seen moments of teen sexual abuse and later murder.
My Name Is 'A' by Anonymous is far from an easy ride- due to its structure & presentation, which, like the teen mind, jumps all over the place. The young cast is largely very believable, and when the shocking/disturbing stuff does appear, it’s most powerful/ shocking, as it’s such a contrast from the numbing/dumb vapidity that surrounds it.
On the extras side, we have a few things- two alternative cuts of the film- The Columbine Effect (19.57), and I Hate Me, Myself, and Us ( 57.08). Deleted scene (1.53), alternative scene ( 3.14), alternative music scene (3.27), two music videos, and two short films- Isolation( 15.56) & Oni-Gokko (4.42).
My Name Is 'A' by Anonymous most certainly won’t be for everyone, and you’ll need both patience/ acceptance of low-fi artiness to get what’s going on here. There is no doubt Ryan-Reid really does manage to create some truly disturbing/ troubling scenes, as well as capturing the vapidity of teen life.