by Tim Gordon
Every so often, a film emerges from Sundance that boldly embraces chaos that leans into absurdity, miscommunication, and dislocation in a way that dares the audience to follow along without a map. Magic Farm, the latest effort from writer-director Amalia Ulman, is such a film. But while it certainly commits to its offbeat tone, it ultimately collapses under the weight of its own quirk.
The premise is promising in a surrealist, fish-out-of-water kind of way: a media team, tasked with profiling a South American musician, touches down in the wrong country. From there, the team, led by a weary producer (played with jaded detachment by Chloë Sevigny) and a barely-focused journalist (a twitchy Alex Wolff), stumbles through linguistic barriers, mistaken identities, and a mounting health crisis that quietly swells in the background.
Stylistically, Magic Farm wants to be a pointed satire of Western media entitlement and the narcissism of viral storytelling, a commentary on the absurdity of chasing content while the world around you is unraveling. There are moments where this critique almost lands, especially in the interactions between the clueless crew and the local collaborators who slowly take over the production with more competence and purpose.
But the film’s scattershot tone and shaggy narrative make it difficult to invest. Scenes drift from awkward comedy to documentary parody to quasi-political allegory without ever settling into something emotionally resonant or narratively coherent. The absurdism often feels more random than pointed, and the characters, while performed with clear commitment (Simon Rex shows up in full goofball form), rarely evolve beyond sketches.
Visually, the film has its charms. There’s a handheld looseness to the cinematography that mirrors the crew’s disorientation, and the vibrant South American locations add a sense of grounded beauty to the story’s escalating disarray. But too often, that visual energy is wasted on scenes that don’t add up to much, jokes that fall flat, long, meandering dialogue, or moments that gesture at larger meaning without following through.
The health crisis lurking in the background, presumably echoing COVID-era anxieties, is underdeveloped, used more as a vague atmospheric cloud than a real dramatic force. It’s symptomatic of the larger issue with Magic Farm: it feels like a film that wants to say something sharp and timely, but mumbles through its punchlines and shrugs off its insights.
There’s something admirable about Ulman’s commitment to discomfort and messiness; she clearly wants to challenge cinematic expectations, to question what it means to “tell a story” in a media-saturated world. But without a stronger structure or more meaningful character arcs, Magic Farm never quite blossoms. It’s an idea in search of execution, a satire in search of stakes.
Grade: D
