Events & Gatherings

Cinema at the Museum: Open Doom Crescendo (with Director Terry Chiu)

Remai Modern is pleased to present a special presentation of Open Doom Crescendo with director Terry Chiu in attendance!

This May, Cinema at the Museum presents a series of films in honour of Asian Heritage Month. These films look at themes of resilience, identity, reflection, class, morality, and expression from a wide range of Asian filmmakers.

Friday, May 30, 7 PM
Film: Open Doom Crescendo
Director: Terry Chiu
Year: 2022
Runtime: 175 minutes
Country: Canada
Rating: N/R

Set in a desolate Montreal wasteland, two super-powered souls, Keikei and Rev, fight for the absolution of their existential pain via the search for a prophesied and quite literal Embodiment of Angst. Forging an alliance with an enigmatic man who roams the wasteland within a giant mobile corrugated plastic boombox, their search for answers put them in the path of a barrage of weird and wicked gangs, each one personifying a conflicting school philosophy. All the while, the most hideous being in the universe subsumes his desire for intimacy with a corrupting nihilism that threatens to swallow all the players on this peculiar plain of existence.

“Open Doom Crescendo is just as preoccupied with delivering visceral insanity to rival any massive Hollywood tentpole. As the players punch, kick, and brawl their way through the terrain, the film adopts a style that could be described as a cranked-up, live-action Dragon Ball Z episode. Chiu maniacally edits the action together with a plethora of both practical stop-motion and digital effects, while dollar-store Halloween costumes become remarkable otherworldly creatures. But perhaps the most thrilling moments of Open Doom Crescendo are those when Chiu vigorously breaks the fourth wall and exposes the behind-the-scenes workings of his gargantuan creation. It’s where Chiu’s guiding philosophy fully crystallizes—that of community art-making as an act of defiance against life’s boundless uncertainty.” – Mark Hanson for Screen Slate

A Q&A with director Terry Chiu will take place following this screening of Open Doom Crescendo.