Rating: NR | Runtime: 106 minutes
Release Date: April 9th, 2024 (USA)
Studio: Indie Rights
Director(s): Erik Bloomquist
Writer(s): Taylor Turner

I believe the PC term is ‘living adjacent.’

The shock I had upon learning Kyle Donovan (Beau Minniear), the young man haunting the current resident of his old room (Emily Keefe’s Bridget Daugherty), had only died a year ago rather than sixty was real. Between his love of Frank Sinatra, the Stanley Kowalski shirt, and the cadence of his speech, I thought for sure that Intermedium was going to prove to be a love story spanning time as well as liminal space. Not that it needed to considering there’s already a lot going on. I simply want to prepare viewers so they don’t hurt themselves with a double-take as I did.

Directed by Erik Bloomquist (a departure from his usual bloody horrors) and written by Taylor Turner (who also plays teenage accompanist Seymour), the film centers on Bridget as her life turn upside down. Forced to leave Chicago and all the opportunity an ingenue could want beneath its bright lights of future stardom because of a scandal, she now finds herself readying to finish her final high school semester in small town suburbia with her excited father (Sean Allan Krill) and stepmother (Amy Hargreaves). To therefore discover a ghost in her bathroom that only she can see and hear is merely icing on an already undesirable cake.

While the unlikely romance that ultimately blossoms between her dour, pathologically clean narcissist and his muscle-bound, wannabe greaser—assisted by their shared love for classic era music, movies, and show tunes—is the major through line, it’s not the main motivation. That is instead introduced by Mr. Christeo (Michael Rady), a high school drama teacher who, despite very limited resources, understands his job isn’t just to coast by on his students’ talent. No, he knows these performances are about community, camaraderie, and humility. Bridget may have the credits and ability to lead the show, but he knows she’ll learn more from being denied that chance.

It’s a bit of “not judging a book by its cover” only from the opposite direction of how that trope usually presents. Rather than the school discovering Bridget isn’t the selfish, entitled brat she seems (although that’s here too), Intermedium places her in the position to realize the world isn’t as black and white as the big city upbringing under the wing of her high-priced agent stepfather would have her believe. Not everything is a competition. Not everything must be perfect. It may take her longer to see this in terms of her acting rival (Haskiri Velazquez’s Nina), but not being able to ignore the contradictory nature of Kyle puts her on the right path to eventually get there.

And that’s before you consider a mission to help Kyle find the closure necessary to move on into the afterlife. Before you factor in Bridget’s father’s failing health, the emotional toll Kyle’s death took on Nina and Evan (Jesse Posey), or Darcy’s (Sadie Scott) amateur paranormalist finally having something “real” to study. There’s the heavy drama of Kyle’s past, the coming-of-age fear and anxiety in Bridget’s drive to conquer the world that leaves little room for hiccups to be deemed anything but failure, and the inherent comedy within a goofy high school musical package (including more than a couple laugh-out-loud quips and a genuinely affecting dance sequence led by Krill).

In the end, Intermedium is exactly what you think it will be with its indie roots and hokey plot progressions as well as proof that those things don’t preclude a film from possessing an ample amount of heart. Give Turner and Bloomquist a lot of credit here for delving into some complex subject matter in authentic ways despite the apparently saccharine package. There are levels and layers of character development and trauma response at work to justify the actions of those on-screen, but none of it is exploited to the point of miserablism either. The filmmakers and cast always know how to soften the blow with a good laugh precisely measured to never undercut its potency.

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Beau Minniear and Emily Keefe in INTERMEDIUM; courtesy of Mainframe Pictures.