My Name Is A
Written and directed by Shane Ryan
Wild Eye Releasing 2014
90 minutes
WTF? I admit I am not a fan of found footage so my opinion of My Name is A by Anonymous is very much colored by that fact. Still, I do not understand this movie. It is presented as based on the actual events surrounding the 2009 murder of a nine year-old girl by a fifteen year-old named Alyssa Bustamante. I poked around the net a bit to figure out what was going on. The murder presented in My Name is A is not the one described in accounts of Bustamante’s crime. More poking around suggests a psychological interpretation of various characters. Mmmm, okay.
The first half of My Name Is A follows five different characters but you do not know who they are. The most important are two reddish haired girls who cut and the little brother of one of them, another is a long-haired girl who paints, and the other is a short haired anorexic.
I kept wondering why I was being shown a particular scene or fake found footage. Especially when you seen the anorexic girl naked in her shower or purging herself. Some of the footage is also grainy black and white for some reason. I also suspect that the some of the characters are holding the same Coolpix camera. Forty minutes in and all I got was depressed and restless teenagers who swear a lot.
Forty-five minutes in and you get the idea someone killed someone, maybe, but also see the anorexic girl’s father abusing her.
My Name is A has me thrown for a loop.