Murder is a form of performance art in an exclusive clip from surreal social-media thriller Like Me
On one level, Like Me, the debut feature from writer/director/editor/producer Robert Mockler, is a visually arresting satire on internet culture, starring Little Sister’s Addison Timlin as Kiya, a disconnected young woman whose attention-getting stabs at viral fame escalate along with her YouTube views, with disturbingly violent results. But, as Timlin tells The A.V. Club about the exclusive clip from the film below, she sees Kiya as something deeper than that. “I never found her to be sociopathic, I found her to be an artist,” albeit a mentally unstable one, she says. “The heart of the movie, for me, is a young woman who can’t identify with the culture of her peers, and she feels so disconnected. She realizes the only way to connect with people is to join the party, and she’s going as far as she can go to hold up a mirror to how truly disgusting we’ve all become.”
Much of the film is a two-hander with Timlin and indie horror legend Larry Fessenden, who co-stars as Marshall, a hotel clerk who’s unwillingly recruited into Kiya’s crime spree/art project. “In my mind, [Fessenden] is one of the greatest character actors of all time,” Timlin says. “We’re cut from similar cloth.” That informs the characters’ relationship on screen as well, as Marshall and Kiya’s relationship evolves from kidnapper and kidnapee to something like friends. “They’re two similar people coming from two different generations, and they’re both isolated and they’re both really lonely,” Timlin says.
In this exclusive clip, the dynamic between Timlin and Fessenden is at its most intense, as she weighs whether to sacrifice her traveling companion in the name of art. “You know, a lot of people are saying I should shoot you,” she says; to find out if she follows through, you’ll have to check out Like Me in select theaters today, January 26.