Necessity is the mother of invention, as Jay Chorney proves with his short film Never Back Down. Shooting nearly entirely on a smartphone, Chorney joins the growing ranks of filmmakers experimenting with the form. From Sean Baker (Tangerine) to Stephen Soderbergh (Unsane), directors of all stripes have been making the choice to lens their films in this less than traditional fashion. While this is often a choice born out of necessity rather than a stylistic choice (as is likely the case here), Chorney demonstrates how the device might be viewed as yet another tool in a director’s artistic arsenal rather than simply an obstacle to be overcome.
Leaning into the immediacy of the handheld aesthetic, Chorney drops the viewer right into the action (such as it is). John Enzio (played by Chorney himself) is a recovering drug addict and petty criminal, trying his best to get clean and live a better life. Frenetically walking down the street, chatting to a precocious local neighbourhood kid, John is wired, chattering away in an endless and confusing stream of consciousness. Immediately making liberal use of quick cuts and extreme closeups of its actors, the effect is jarring at first, but soon creates an intense and somewhat uncomfortable level of intimacy between the protagonist and the viewer. While John is the kind of character most of us would probably try to ignore if we ran into him on the street, Chorney gives the viewer little choice but to get up close and personal with the guy.
With virtually no other actors in the film, Chorney stages a one-man show of sorts. Throughout the majority of the film, John wanders around talking to himself, to his dog, or on the phone (to characters who are neither seen nor heard); sharing his inner thoughts with the audience and filling us in on the particulars of his life – to varying degrees of success. While I found it to be a clever device allowing Chorney to act essentially as a one-man filmmaking machine, John’s backstory was at times difficult to glean from his musings alone.
A former boxer trying to get back into fighting shape, John spends most of his time working out or arguing. Among others, he argues with his kid, his girlfriends, and his friend Tommy, who succumbs to the same demons John himself is trying to fight off. Throughout these moments, Chorney wields his phone in every which way, leaving us shaken up in much the same way that the character must be. While an overuse of special effects and coloured filters often gives the film a somewhat dated MySpace aesthetic, the frenetic pace of the editing effectively mirrors John’s state of mind. To my pleasant surprise, Chorney’s willingness to experiment with unorthodox combinations of shots and effects – while not always successful in execution – occasionally pays off to magical effect.
One such moment is a scene in which John, suffering the crippling effects of withdrawal, finds himself wandering around an Old Navy for reasons that are never made clear. The scene feels clumsily executed at first, with John muttering to himself about his withdrawal symptoms instead of letting the action speak for itself. Suddenly… the sound drops out completely and the pace slackens dramatically as Chorney uses the extreme closeup effect in slow motion to create a surprisingly effective sequence communicating his altered state. Another interesting sequence in the film consisted of little more than John walking around his Brooklyn neighbourhood, capturing little snippets of the world around him. Like a sequential set of randomly captured Instagram stories, it felt like a fascinating document of John’s little corner of the world, through his own point of view.
While the film is undoubtedly rough around the edges, it is clearly a labour of love for Chorney. Never Back Down was selected to screen at both the Serbest International Film Festival and Brooklyn International Short Film Festival, and was awarded a prize at the Makizhmithran International Film Festival earlier this year. For those interested in delving deeper into John’s story, Chorney has produced multiple follow ups which are available to be streamed on his YouTube channel.
Never Back Down is currently streaming on YouTube.
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