‘Sylvia’ summons queer horror comedy at its comedic best

Something refreshing while we wait for summer movie season to arrive

By JOHN PAUL KING

There was a time when the words “straight-to-video” carried an unspoken implication of mediocrity, at best – but that was before a massive shift in the film industry, accelerated but perhaps not solely driven by the pandemic and the need it created for “watch at home” options – changed the game when it comes to judging a movie by its viewing format.

Consider “Summoning Sylvia,” a campy horror comedy that made its VOD premiere on April 7, in which all but one of the characters (two if you count dead people) are queer. It’s safe to say that it’s definitely a “niche” film, and despite being granted a brief-and-perfunctory theatrical run – presumably, like most non-mainstream movies of similar ilk, for the purposes of awards consideration – it’s not the kind of thing that might have gotten a wide big screen release at any point in the history of the American film industry. At first assessment, it might seem like a rollicking, raunchy and VERY gay piece of fluff; it’s all those things, but it has a lot more imagination and ambition behind it than meets the eye from scrolling past the trailer on social media.

Written and directed by Wesley Taylor and Alex Wyse, it’s an absurdly farcical yet genuinely hair-raising adventure in which Larry (Travis Coles), on the eve of being “gay-married,” is kidnapped by his groomsmen (Frankie Grande, Troy Iwata, and Noah J. Ricketts) for a bachelor party weekend at a country house in upstate New York, reputedly haunted by the ghost of a woman (the titular Sylvia, played by Veanne Cox) who murdered her own son (Camden Garcia) before being killed herself by an angry mob 100 years ago. Naturally, the queer quartet tries to unravel this century-old mystery by holding a séance, but the unforeseen addition to the mix of future brother-in-law Harrison (Nicholas Logan) – an ex-soldier with clearly antisocial and possibly homophobic personality issues – turns their tongue-in-cheek party game into a terrifying-yet-hilarious battle with the dark forces that seemingly rule over their fashionably rustic Airbnb.

It’s all very silly, of course, and anyone hoping for hardcore horror featuring malevolent ghosts and demonic possession are likely to be sorely disappointed; what’s surprising is how often it manages to supersede its silliness to deliver more than just the occasional cheap jump scare, and how well it frames its madcap scenario through a perspective that, incredibly, makes everything feel a lot weightier – or at least, more meaningful – than its campy comedic tone invites us to expect.

Some background on the film’s creators quickly offers a possible explanation for why that might be so. Taylor and Wyse, Broadway stalwarts both onstage and off, come at their material from a theatrical tradition that includes such absurdist queer playwrights as Joe Orton, Christopher Durang, Paul Rudnick, and others whose work use pointedly nonsensical contrivances to poke fun at socially relevant themes that might otherwise not be so amusing. Their film is rife with that same surrealist spirit, while still evoking the old-fashioned pleasures of such humorously macabre classics as “Blithe Spirit” or “Arsenic and Old Lace” – a good-natured blending of styles that goes a long way toward opening audiences up to its familiar premise. To put it more simply, if a bit poetically, there is an unmistakable method to the madness.

If references to 20th-century absurdist theater don’t ring a bell for you, it might be more appropriate to draw parallels from a cinematic angle; it’s impossible not to notice how strongly “Summoning Sylvia” evokes the non-stop, throw-it-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks comedic milieu of filmmakers like Mel Brooks, whose anything-for-a-laugh style never got in the way of a respectful and proficient cinematic style nor precluded the possibility for scathingly candid cultural commentary, or even the self-aware “meta” sensibilities of someone like Guillermo Del Toro, whose understanding of horror is deeply intertwined with an recognition of the genre’s potential for underscoring fear with a humanistic streak that makes it a vehicle for transcendence as well as for terror.

Still, such comparisons don’t quite capture the exact nature of this unabashedly nonsensical movie’s charms – it’s neither as anarchic as a Mel Brooks film nor as melancholy as a Del Toro – but they approximate the space in which it stakes its claim; it should be obvious to any seasoned film buff that “Summoning Sylvia” carefully aligns its supposedly otherworldly sense of menace with an all-too-realistic fear of violent homophobia, and that its insinuation of an apparently angry straight man with seemingly toxic views about sexuality and gender as a potential existential threat to its queer band of determined-but-daffy protagonists has a lot more significance than a mere plot device. To put it simply, it’s a movie that never tries too hard to drive home its allegorical story arc, which it highlights as much by sending up as by serious contemplation, but it also never tries to pretend that it doesn’t have one, and in serving both ends at once it succeeds in proving that a film can be purely entertaining and still have the kind of substance that keeps it from being simply a guilty pleasure.

It should go without saying that much of its success comes from the ability of its cast to walk the thin line required of them by the material. Though the film’s most recognizable star is arguably out Tony-winning actor Michael Urie, who delivers little more than a cameo performance – albeit a solid and likable one – as Larry’s husband-to-be, it’s up to the rest of the cast to do the heavy lifting; they’re more than capable, with Coles standing out as a strong lead in a diverse ensemble of players, and Grande surpassing expectation with a show-stealing turn as the fiercely femme and unapologetically over-the-top Nico, whose self-proclaimed witchiness and unrestrained libido play a big part in making Larry’s bachelor party a weekend to be remembered, for better or for worse. Even Sean Grandillo, whose short appearance as an unexpected interloper into the weekend’s events adds a memorable dash of winking, trope-twisting humor to the program, makes an impression on the strength of his sheer, joyful goofiness alone.

All of this is not to say that “Summoning Sylvia” is the kind of cinematic masterpiece that makes a whole industry stand up and take notice; while its unpretentiousness allows us to absorb its higher points without heavy-handed obviousness, its messaging is hardly anything new. Even so, any movie that addresses the specter of homophobia – especially in an age when even the comparatively innocent phenomenon of drag, given suitably elevated status by Taylor and Wyse in a highly entertaining climactic sequence, is under attack from bigots desperate to turn the tide of growing queer acceptance – is a welcome addition to our must-see list, and this one manages to do so without sacrificing its sense of humor or its commitment to entertaining us.

It may not change your life, but it’s sure to provide a fun 75 minutes’ worth of viewing pleasure – and that’s more than enough to earn our recommendation for any queer movie fan looking for something new and refreshing while we wait for the summer movie season to arrive.