Rent Wisconsin Death Trip (1999)
3.3 of 5 from 72 ratings
1h 15min
- General info
- Available formats
- Synopsis:
A most extraordinary experience awaits those with a taste for the strange and the bizarre in the small town of Black River Falls. Rocked by an inexplicable confluence of events in the late 1890s, this sleepy Wisconsin town generated some of the most unlikely news reports and stories ever told. Previously harmless residents - including children - commit a series of gruesome, violent murders. Sightings of ghosts, and reports of haunting and possession run rife. An epidemic sweeps through the town and takes with it some of the residents' newest born sons and daughters. Extreme cases of paranoia, insanity and delirium plague the townsfolk. And the population finds itself terrorised by a cocaine-snorting madwoman with a taste for smashing windows... Based on documented accounts, this haunting and surreal film beautifully evokes the otherworldly spirit and wayward madness of a time and place marked by an altogether unreal set of circumstances. Bizarre. But true. - Actors:
- Jeffrey Golden, Jo Vukelich, Marcus Monroe, Marilyn White, John Schneider, John Baltes, Raeleen McMillion, Krista Grambow, Clay Anton, Bobbie Jo Westphal, Scott Hulbert, Zeke Dasho, Kathryn Anderson, Kevin Anderson
- Directors:
- Jamie Marsh
- Producers:
- Jamie Marsh, Maureen A. Ryan
- Voiced By:
- Ian Holm
- Narrated By:
- Ian Holm
- Writers:
- Michael Lesy, Jamie Marsh
- Aka:
- Висконсин: Путешествие к смерти
- Studio:
- Tartan
- Genres:
- Documentary, Drama
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Reviews (2) of Wisconsin Death Trip
ASBO County - Wisconsin Death Trip review by CP Customer
This is a different take on the documentary genre with mixed results. While its fairly easy to investigate recent or current events with today's media, the 1890's lack such facilities. Making this attempt fairly unique.
James Marsh has incorporated the original photographs and audio readings of the local newspaper reports. These have been wound around recreations in atmospheric B&W, which are startling and effective. The only drawback is the colour modern day footage which feels out of place. Perhaps its inclusion should have been left until the very end, for a final chapter entitled 'Black River Falls Today'.
Ultimately you're left with the feeling that we've all missed out on the Wild Wild North, in favour of the more infamous West. From window smashing to insanity to lost opera singers. Wisconsin Death Trip is a bizarre ride.
1 out of 2 members found this review helpful.
Portrait of a Town on the Verge - Wisconsin Death Trip review by griggs
Feels less like a documentary and more like a séance. Wisconsin Death Trip drifts through a plague of madness, murder, and melancholia in a small Midwestern town, all narrated in the kind of deadpan that makes it somehow more unsettling. The black-and-white recreations have a strange power—static, eerie, almost dreamlike—and the reputation of death, decay and despair starts to feel perversely hypnotic.
Much of it plays out like a Nick Cave murder ballad: doomed characters, gothic detail, and a certain bruised beauty under all the misery. There’s a dry humour too, if you’re attuned to the absurdity of arsenic-laced pastries and window breaking epidemics. It doesn’t build to anything grand, but that’s sort of the point—just wave after wave of personal apocalypse.
It can feel a little mannered at times, and the modern inserts are more curious than essential, but it casts as spell. Bleak, beautiful, and oddly poetic—a scrapbook of American sorrow set to funereal strings.
1 out of 1 members found this review helpful.