The Subject is a 2020 drama about a filmmaker dealing with the aftermath of his latest film while someone else secretly begins documenting him.
Phil Waterhouse (Jason Biggs) is a filmmaker in New York, successful by most standards, living in a nice home just outside the city with his longtime Latino girlfriend Jess (Anabelle Acosta). He’s a white man, which is important as he’s living with the tragedy (and benefits) of his last release, documenting a young black man’s fight to escape his perceived destiny. It was a controversial film but one he hoped would have reach in the subject’s community. However, in the two years since, he feels nothing has changed, which has him wondering if his work truly means anything. While he begins his next project, he starts getting silent phone calls and soon discovers someone is filming him, even at his home. But to what end?
Directed by Lanie Zipoy and written by Chisa Hutchinson, The Subject is a cross between a kind of home invasion-esque thriller and tense social commentary. It’s a small production but handles the narrow focus with a wider message by finding a solid balance between the relationships of its few characters and what they each represent on the lengthy social spectrum of which they populate.
And it’s within these characters that Hutchinson and Zipoy find their greatest strength, especially with Phil, a man with a passion to expose deeper truths who is saddled with well, being a white male human. Biggs is well cast, playing against type as a middle-aged comfortable man a little oblivious to some of the more clearer markers in his life. I really like how the film gives him opportunities to expose his core without him even recognizing it himself, like in the way he glances at a jogging young woman, or the way he tightens when his new assistant Marley (Carra Patterson) takes off her jacket. These slowly pick at the tattered frays that leave us suspect of his weaknesses.
The Subject is well titled, the story using the lens of a supposed stalker to open the door to a world Phil tries to live in, this coupled with Phil’s own job that has him up close to urban drama while inexplicable distanced from it. He’s not a “bad guy” but he’s not entirely without blemish. It’s a strong performance, and it’s matched by a few alongside him, including Nile Bullock as Malcolm, a teen whose fate we know from the start but becomes crucial in leveling the true weight of what lies on the other side of Phil’s camera.
Zipoy doesn’t play into the expectations of the horror tropes it leans on, including the ever-present camera peering in on Phil’s life, capturing the cracks that lead to a starkly different second act. This is where the story shifts from its development of Phil and our empathy of him to the consequences of everything that comes before it. How this is handled might not be what audiences expect, this mostly conversationally-driven, rather than violence-focused, like a sudden stage play took over the movie. However, Biggs is surprisingly good, as is the late entry of Aunjanue Ellis, who delivers some genuine emotional punch.
The Subject is a traumatic experience, not because it’s gruesome or bloody (which it is not), but because it strips down a man to his most raw form. It is a long journey to be sure, the film a lengthy two hours, and its themes of art versus truth not entirely fresh, but that it sidesteps the easy way out and avoids the temptation to go where most will believe it might says a lot about what the filmmakers intend. Highly recommended.