Rating: NR | Runtime: 78 minutes
Release Date: June 13th, 2024 (USA)
Studio: Memory
Director(s): Prashanth Kamalakanthan & Artemis Shaw
Writer(s): Prashanth Kamalakanthan & Artemis Shaw

We haven’t disinfected.

The more “pandemic” films I see, the more I come to realize that most couples truly do not like each other. I look at Kallia (Artemis Shaw) and Ram (Prashanth Kamalakanthan) and wonder: Why? What is it that they like about the other? It’s not personality. It’s definitely not temperament. She doesn’t respect his paranoia about an impending virus-fueled lockdown and he refuses to help her understand it, choosing “selfish tantrum” to make himself feel better instead.

Kamalakanthan and Shaw’s New Strains (they also write/direct) depicts their characters inevitably losing patience, recognizing their hatred for the other, and succumbing to the disease (a cognitive regression that has adults acting like children). That’s it. Sometimes it’s cutely funny. Sometimes it’s just plain weird. But mostly it’s a healthy dose of second-hand embarrassment for two people who are blind to their circumstances and unlucky in the fact that their much-needed clarity comes at a moment when memory loss erases the lesson.

Shooting on VHS is an interesting choice that lends it a “found footage” aesthetic despite neither holding the camera. So, are we supposed to be the filmmaker? Are we intruding on their space somehow? Or is it a play for manufactured nostalgia? Most scenes also end with a quick zoom towards the texture of a painting or wallpaper—a tick I have zero answers for. It plays like a move for comedic effect, but just comes off as strange. I guess that’s par for the course, though. New Strains approaches comedy and pathos, but ultimately exists in a state of perpetually restrained chaos.

Viewed while I was a member of the Domestic Narrative Jury at the 2023 Buffalo International Film Festival.

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Artemis Shaw and Prashanth Kamalakanthan in NEW STRAINS; courtesy of BIFF.