Lucid

Where does creativity come from? This seems like an inceasingly pertinent question in a world where people are trying to sell us the idea that we can get machines to be creative on our behalf. Before gen AI came along, many artists’ deepest fear was inadvertently replicating the work of others, absorbing elements subconsciously and mistaking them for original ideas. They wouldn’t want to end up like Mia (Caitlin Acken Taylor), nailing a dead fish to a painting in front of the art class and being told to come back when they have something that’s really her own, something with heart.

Where does one look to find something like that? “Dig deeper” is the only advice the tutor gives. Then one night when Mia is working in the kitchen at Bitchin’ Chicken, Mia gets a visit from a group of queer filmmakers who demand greasy food and tell her to live her life now before the world explodes in 2000. Led by early online star Titania, whom she idolises, they prompt her to visit local witch Syd (Mackenzie Lemire), from whom she receives a special drug – the lucid of the title. This, she is told, will clear her clouded mind and unlock her creative potential. With it, of course, comes a warning. “Strong medicine, made from Tibetan snowdrops... if you overdo it, you’re fucked.”

Well, there wouldn’t be a film if she didn’t break the rules.

There is, to be fair, another problem, and that’s that there are blocks in Mia’s mind that she didn’t put there herself. As it becomes clearer who did, she begins to panic, desperate to find out why. The only way to reach this truth – and, perhaps, the underlying personal truths that will finally enable her to feel whole – is to take more lucid. In doing so, she finds it increasingly difficult to keep track of time, of place, of the boundaries of reality. She starts having conversations with her dead grandmother, but are the old woman’s assertions true, or just a product of her own overstimulated imagination?

Clues are left for viewers through changes in format, focus and colour tone, providing just enough cohesion to enable us to participate in the process rather than just sit there passively, bombarded with imagery. Not that it isn’t beautiful. It, too, is full of ambiguities. Mia has a fantastic wardrobe made up in large part of reclaimed and upcycled older clothes. Her face is frequently covered in paint smears, reflecting her obscured identity. Her studio home is half a room, half a decaying glasshouse. It’s chaotic, but each item tells a story. In her half-dreaming state she frequently sees a red door – a common enough motif in this sort of thing, except that we’re not always sure which side of it she’s on.

Acken Taylor commits herself fully to the role, and it was a real stroke of luck for the production team that they managed to cast her sister, Georgia Acken, as her younger self, with both independently interpreting the character in ways that gel perfectly. Having impressed audiences in Jenn Wexler’s The Sacrifice Game, the younger actor is definitely one to watch out for. Though it clearly provided an opportunity for its creators to play with ideas they had collected over time, Lucid is surprisingly coherent once the pieces start to come together, and it’s among the more successful experiments in this sort of portraiture. There’s a genuine artistic philosophy behind it, not just noise. Meander though it may, the journey is worthwhile if you’re willing to commit yourself to it.

Lucid screened as part of the 2025 Fantasia International Film Festival.

Reviewed on: 14 Sep 2025