Written By Jonathan Weichsel, MoreHorror.com
Watching My Name is A by Anonymous, a moody, raw film, can feel a lot like ripping open an old wound. From the desolate suburban landscapes to the angst, rage, and depression felt by its teenage subjects, this is a film that is determined to present the pain of modern teenage existence without any filter, no matter how offensive or uncomfortable this may be to some audiences.
Many viewers of My Name is A by Anonymous will react most immediately to the most viscerally painful aspects of the film: the bulimia, the wrist cutting, and the incest. But the truth is that although this is all rendered with graphic realism, these are all very short scenes in a much larger film. The most painful scenes in the film, the ones that really stick with you, are the ones depicting the everyday life of normal kids just hanging out.
The teenage subjects of the film all act like real teenagers, and that includes their insecurities and anxieties, their ennui and egotism, and their apathy and despair. The teenagers in the film are in real pain, and it shows in the way they carry themselves, in their faces, in the way they rough house, and in the teasing way they talk about sex.
The majority of My Name is A by Anonymous has little to no plot, preferring to show us depressing tableaus of life in a run down suburban wasteland rather than feed us some cooked up story about its lost teenage characters. In fact, for much of the film I thought that there wasn’t going to be a plot, until the final act when the teenagers react to a shocking and incomprehensible murder, but even at this turn the film follows its characters’ emotional reactions rather than veering off into an artificial story.
The teenagers in My Name is A by Anonymous walk around with phones in their hands, and the camera work in the film cuts freely between a traditional third person point of view and a first person point of view via the cameras on their phones. The title of the film could very well be a reference to this truth about 21st century life, that our lives are public even while being simultaneously private.
Nothing about My Name is A by Anonymous feels artificial. The film gives a truly raw and authentic look teen angst and disaffected youth. My Name is A By Anonymous has a very lo-fi, DIY indie feel to it. It is a stunning and sometimes shocking piece of underground cinema.
