Skip to main content
Ilima Considine remembers Portland’s summer of 2020 all too well.
“It rained ash at my house for weeks, there were over 100 days of pepper spray downtown, 911 was throttled by Portland police so it was impossible to call in emergencies, and the most vicious work calls ended with, ‘Stay safe!’” the writer-director says.
Though Portland has come a long way in five years, the scars it bears from that time haven’t faded. Considine endeavors to capture them in Drug Holiday, a darkly comedic rock opera about addiction, depression and radicalization showing at Mission Theater on Nov. 14 ahead of its streaming premiere. Attempting to land its high-concept humor as an alternative to stoner comedies, Drug Holiday has a lot to say but unfortunately suffers from novice insufficiencies.
Taking place in a city only a few layers removed from our own Stumptown, Drug Holiday follows two sets of best friends and their unhealthy coping mechanisms over the course of one night. In one story, Chris (Jax Kellington) consoles Andrea (Delaney Smith), who deals with her bad breakup by abusing her opioid prescription. The pair are hounded by Caspar (Ronan Clover) and Johnson (Lars Cinderland), crude teenagers on a quest to lose their virginity who fixate on the girls as their best shot.
Caspar and Johnson wind up the more compelling protagonists as they cope with rejection and pad their fragile egos by becoming serial killers. Drug Holiday implicitly links the boys’ chauvinistic pursuits with their violent pastime, asking what will become of a generation of youngsters raised by the Manosphere. It’s grim stuff, but in an age when the terminally online trade memes via high-profile assassinations and mass shootings, it’s entirely too timely. That the pair are played by trans actors adds a layer of irony to their proudly toxic worldview.
Considine based the pair of boys on a true story. Teen skinheads Artyom Anoufriev and Nikita Lytkin, known as “the Academy Maniacs,” murdered six people in Irkutsk, Russia, between November 2010 and April 2011. As the mother to a teenage boy of her own, Considine used Drug Holiday to explore her fears of social isolation and radicalization.
“When people who are having a hard time fitting in, who are trying to better themselves and to find systems they can follow, find themselves on the wrong side of the internet and are validated for the first time in their lives…the natural response would be to lean in to finding a tribe and validation,” she says. “But these results can be tragic.”
Drug Holiday also speaks to a world where, in spite of these horrors, people are expected to carry on unperturbed. As stories of the gruesome body count circulate, the citizens of Not Portland are more concerned by Californian expatriates looking to gentrify the town. With all this darkness lurking at every corner, it’s no wonder Andrea copes with a tin of pills and wistful remembrances of her horrible ex.
That said, for as much as Considine has on her mind about important topics, and for her film experience and connections, Drug Holiday unfortunately just doesn’t work. The movie, filmed in five days with partial support from The Holler Fund, is not Considine’s first time working with a camera. Even grading for the nanobudget curve, there’s an unforgivably amateurish quality to the production.
Cinematography is limited to listless two-shots, and editing is either nonexistent or overdone. Considine is a member of the city of Portland’s Arts Access Fund oversight committee, so it seems unlikely that she’s a stranger to the creative funding process. Yet there appears not to have been enough money to shoot any scene twice, leaving every awkward pause and flubbed line onscreen for all to see.
Music might be a better outlet for Considine, as that seems like the element of Drug Holiday that got the most consideration. Drug Holiday is a musical, alternating between lo-fi covers of pop hits that are tolerable enough and original numbers performed by the cast and written by Considine’s band, The Sex Dolls. Each of these songs brings the film to a screeching halt with repeated lyrics over simple beats. By the third act, there are more songs than dialogue, leaving me to wonder if the project would be better served as a concept album than a feature film.
Despite its shortcomings, there’s a passion and drive behind Drug Holiday that can’t be denied and should be encouraged. Considine’s commentary on the perils of life in the digital age comes across as earnest and urgent, especially as we struggle to survive its consequences. Drug Holiday’s frank (if a bit absurd) approach to its subject matter is commendable, if not entirely successful.
SEE IT: Drug Holiday at Mission Theater, 1624 NW Glisan St., 503-223-4527, mcmenamins.com/mission-theater. 8 pm Friday, Nov. 14. $24.24, $90 for VIP table for two, $11 for EBT card holders. NR, viewer discretion advised.
