By Quinn Smalley
“They are among us, cruising us at the bar…”
Official trailer for “In The Valley: A Cosmic Queer Abduction Film.”
The vast and endless void of outer space has always fascinated humans. The possibility of not being alone ravishes us, and our imaginations try to break down the blurring mosaic hiding the visage of our intergalactic neighbors, if there are any.
The short film “In The Valley: A Cosmic Queer Abduction Film” asks, “what if the aliens were gay as fuck?”
Jorgie Goico plays Josh, a shy but tenacious patron of the bar. Screenshot from “In The Valley: A Cosmic Queer Abduction Film.”
We hear about alien abductions stories, all of them strange, hard to follow and completely unbelievable. That’s what my 28 minute trip with “In the Valley: A Cosmic Queer Abduction Film” was like. Many twists and unexplained phenomena left me empathizing with the people in reality that claim to have survived a close encounter of the fourth kind.
Our mostly silent protagonist, Josh, stumbles into a bar in the middle of what looks like Joshua Tree, and the only pocket of life within a 50 mile radius. There’s a drag queen, a somber couple dancing closely and a surly bartender, played by Aiden Zhane of RuPaul’s Drag Race season 12 fame. The vibe is strange, almost like the protagonist stumbled upon something he wasn’t supposed to; his presence is perceived and questioned.
Jorgie Goico portrays the aforementioned protagonist of few words, Josh. He wanders into the bar, where a handsome and welcoming bartender is just starting his shift. He’s the only one that seems to want to be hospitable to Josh. Taken with this friendly and devastatingly handsome face, as if entranced, Josh spends his evening with him.
Josh covered in blood… but why? Screenshot from “In The Valley: A Cosmic Queer Abduction Film.”
The bartender, played by Arden Lassalle, and Goico have very good chemistry. Through simple conversations steered by Lassalle’s character, the pair are magnetic and have one of the more passionate and well choreographed sex scenes I’ve seen in a while.
The director Adam Van Dyke masterfully squeezes out the right bit of tension balanced with an arousing mysteriousness from every scene. These elements are what the movie thrives off of, particularly the ending. No spoilers, but as a viewer, it really had me thinking about what I just witnessed all night.
The acting was another high point of the short film. Goico shines bright, with his breathtaking smile and guttural blood curdling screams of pure terror. Every scene Goico made his own, taking the spirit of the timid final girl from any given Friday the 13th movie.
Goico’s intensity and vulnerability in the darker more intense scenes was impressive and impactful. Genuine final girl energy. Screenshot from “In The Valley: A Cosmic Queer Abduction Film.”
Visually, “In The Valley: A Cosmic Queer Abduction Film” is a delight, making effective use of lighting in almost every scene. Every scene had a dedicated hue to it, the bar scenes were primarily red and gold, the desert at night was foggy and tinted in a mystical emerald and sex scenes were draped in a rich and enticing purple. These colors carried the visual appeal a long way throughout the short film set in the sparse Southern Californian desert. It gave a sort of “The Hills Have Eyes” but way less beige and nuclear-waste-mutant-terror and way more celestial intrigue and atmosphere.
Like any good abduction tale, “In the Valley: A Cosmic Queer Abduction Film” will leave you with more questions than answers, and certainly more traumatized. One of the biggest questions in the mind is, “Are we really alone?”
Screenshot from “In The Valley: A Cosmic Queer Abduction Film.”