Melodies of The Abyss: Speculating Through a Haunting for Life Narrative

Sam Iwata aka Liu’s Melodies of The Abyss is a speculative psychological thriller about the final night of Kurt Cobain’s life. Grabbing onto the idea of instability, the film swells to surrealist crescendoes in between repeated returns to the night of April 5 as the culmination of all missteps and regrets. 

The centre of all that? A heavy-handed portrayal of Courtney Love (Conney Louve, played by a thorough Kym Jackson) as Lucy Morningstar. As Kurt (Andrew Steel as adult Kurt D. Cobryn and Finnian James as the teenager in flashbacks) reckons with his history, Conney’s foil emerges in the sweet as honey Daisy Morgan (Teagan Skye, the most grounded performance in the film). 

Chronologically, the story starts with seventeen year-old Kurt at odds with the world and the underworld both. He is seriously considering the lucrative offer from the mysterious, alluring woman—Conney, dangling the quintessential Faustian deal before him. In 1994, Kurt has made the trip from LA to his home in Seattle, yet to realise that this is going to be his last night. Both the costume and production design departments have pulled their weight. The shotgun, the heroin kit, even the sneakers’ colour look right out of archival evidence. 

Soon, Conney (as voice on the phone and face in the family photo) and Lucy (looking equally luscious and capricious) merge into one. The chickens have come home to roost, and this time Kurt—mega success owed to the immortal, omnipresent Lucy—is faced with a debtor who will not be satisfied with a few punches and ominous threats. 

By now Kurt is out of spark of either rage or hope. There is only despair, and terrible last resorts available to him. On the other hand, Lucy burns ever more brightly, what with the prospect of collecting debt on the horizon. Jackson benefits the most from the lighting design as a supernatural being, her mercurial changes sometimes casting her in deep shadows, and sometimes holding her in the brilliant glow of intense desire. The further the plot progresses, the more the stage belongs to her. Which is fitting for a devil who feeds on disorder. But even gluttony can get old, and even the devil has a narrative arc. 

Melodies of The Abyss puts its twists and turns not in the climax but in the journey leading up to that point. Kurt’s monsters are rolled into one neat, easily spotted package, a point to refer to every time some event or action needs explaining. It makes for an entertaining thriller precisely because it knows the function of its genre: to unburden from the viewer the demands of mundane life. And what’s more, bringing them to the ultimate relief, narrative closure.  

Watch Melodies of the Abyss Short Film Trailer