The Varava Brothers are gaining a name for themselves with insightful and innovative short films, which they’ve chosen to shoot on film stock. The Shadow Effect is the second film from the Brothers after their 2004 comedy, The Fourth. (You can read the critique for The Fourth from Monika DeLeeuw-Taylor here.)
Coming the closest to science fiction of any of the Varava Brothers’ pieces, The Shadow Effect looks at a man named Harold Grey (Scoot McNairy), who feels dissatisfied with his monotonous life of Chinese food, soap operas, and working at a recycling plant. When he notices a television ad for “The Shadow Effect”, a self-help course being taught by Dr. Janelle Stone (Emily Kosloski), her promises are immediately attractive to Harold, as she claims that her course will change anyone’s life for the better.
As such, he heads down to her office to pay her visit. Upon meeting her, he discovers that the main premise of this course is to find someone whose life you would like to have and then become their shadow. It is much easier to just mimic someone else’s success, RATHER than try to make your own success. His first assignment, therefore, is to track down someone whom he can imitate.
Encouraged to look for people he knows, he first looks for possible candidates from his co-workers and then to folks who work at his local Chinese eatery. However, everyone is too ordinary, so he looks past them to the next best thing: someone he feels like he knows. As Harold’s addicted to a soap-opera called “Treasure Trove“, he decides that he will mimic a character on the show named “Chaz Martini” (Ryan McPartlin), as Chaz seems to have it all together.
Each day Harold watches Chaz on TV and tries to mimic his life to resemble what he sees. He buys the outfits Chaz wears and buys a red convertible so he can be like Chaz. In a nice bit of a realism, the convertible Harold buys is heavily used and substantially more beat up than Chaz’s convertible, which shows that Harold has not miraculously become rich by following this plan. (As the filmmakers had to get both a new convertible and a matching beat up one, this is impressive.) He gets Goodwill-quality tuxes to live up to a party scene Chaz is in and drinks champagne out of a glass measuring cup, as he can’t afford the fancy wine goblets Chaz uses in the soap opera.
Dr. Stone explains that Harold is progressing well, but must become even more like his target character by getting rid of his own past, so that he can truly become the new Harold, as opposed to being a shadow. (Apparently, by becoming a perfect replica of the shadow caster, The Shadow Effect process is completed and the user is proclaimed completely “recreated.”)
Harold responds by getting rid of the mementos of his own past and really trying to immerse himself in every element of Chaz, going so far as to start smoking and having one night stands with women. As he fully tries to become Chaz, he comes to realize he is not the only Shadow Effect disciple trying to replicate Chaz Martini. While smoking a cigarette in front of his favorite Chinese restaurant, he sees another man in complete Chaz Martini regalia, smoking a cigarette and leading a young lady to his red convertible.
When Harold goes back to Dr. Stone, to discuss this discovery, along with his own progress, he is shocked to find her office building is closed for remodeling, with no forwarding address or phone number.
Later, Harold has another shock to his system when he watches “Treasure Trove” and sees Chaz Martini lose control of his convertible and fly off a cliff into the sea. Since he’s become so enmeshed in the character of Chaz, Harold sees no other option but to start up his own convertible and recklessly race around the hairpin turns of the cliffs near his own home. However, before he can throw his car over the brink, he is passed by the convertible of the other Chaz Martini doppelganger, who seems bound and determined to beat Harold to the final fate of their mutual idol.
It is at this point that Harold must truly ask himself how much his own life really sucks if he’s he is willing to end it all to follow a crappy role model.
