If I Let It Win is a psychological thriller regarding trauma, mental illness, and self-acceptance, that has an original soundtrack and a 48 minute total runtime. The film begins with main character Hendrix leading his five closest friends (Reath, Elodie, John, Isaiah, and Harper) up a rural hill to see the stars. He stands out among his group; he’s seen as weird but they still love him. Unbeknownst to his friends, he suffers from severe delusional obsessions and violent intrusive thoughts, with his only escapes being journaling and poetry. Hendrix is a victim of his own mental prison. This is first shown when he convinces himself that his girlfriend, Elodie, is going to die during an asthma attack. He goes to extreme lengths to save her even after she said she’d be okay. Hendrix is a good man with pure intentions but his relationship to Elodie is extremely rough, mainly due to Reath’s character. Reath is the complete opposite of Hendrix- a naturally funny asshole without a care in the world or regard for anyone else. Reath says and does things that infuriate Hendrix, but it’s almost always ambiguous whether or not Hendrix is just crazy or Reath is intentionally manipulating him. During Hendrix’s freakout episode trying to save Elodie, he spotted a barn. The group travels there the next day, and Hendrix has an argument with Elodie. He storms out and spots a pig head mounted on a fence outside. He feels so isolated and alone that he begins talking to it, feeling like it understands him more than any of his friends do. From inside the barn, John spots an angry old farmer in the distance storming toward them with a shotgun. “Always on my goddamn property, son of a bitch. I’m gonna get you this time”, the farmer says to himself. The kids all narrowly escape in Hendrix’s pickup truck and the farmer angrily throws his hat on the ground in despair.
Jump cut to Hendrix alone in his dark 1950s home, where what he refers to as “It” (a physical being, a manifestation of his mental illness) is revealed to the audience for the first time. He’s so used to it ruining every moment that he just tells it to go away, still mentally disurbed but unphased by its presence. He spends the whole movie running away from it. The friends had previously decided to get drunk for the first time together before being sent off to college, so they all begin partying at his house. The excessive consumption of alcohol triggers a psychosis episode in Hendrix, where “It” appears behind Elodie as they’re dancing, holding her head back and slitting her throat in front of him with a knife. He also hallucinates Reath coming behind her and passionately kissing her neck. He’s so overwhelmed that he pushes Elodie onto the ground and runs away into a dark room only lit by moonlight as it heavily rains outside. Out of all people, Reath comes to talk to him to try to make everything better. Hendrix confronts him, accusing him of sabotaging his relationship. Reath of course denies this, further manipulating Hendrix into thinking he’s just insane. Hendrix falls asleep and John drunkenly finds his book of disturbing poems. Hendrix wakes up the next day and breaks up with Elodie, confessing everything he struggles with mentally. She says that she’ll be there for him and help him through it, but he insists that she can’t. “Why aren’t you scared of me?”, he asks her. “I don’t know”. “You should be. It’s over. I’m sorry.”
The friends are still at Hendrix’s house, debating who’s side they’re on, and Reath’s true colors begin to unveil. Him and John get into a shoving match as Elodie yells at them to stop, her first and only time being loud in the entire movie. Hendrix sits alone with the pig head, verbally working out where everything went wrong. Reath manipulates Elodie into kissing him as Hendrix returns back home with flowers to apologize. He catches them in the act. “It” stands behind Hendrix, cradling his head as he tries to resist every evil urge it’s telling him to act on. He takes a long kitchen knife and confronts Elodie and Reath in a fit of yelling and crying. Reath is scared. Very suspenseful as the building music suddenly stops and Reath snaps into a different version of himself that Hendrix created in his head. Reath says “Well maybe if you didn’t treat her like shit, none of this would have happened, now would it?” All of Hendrix’s greatest fears come to life in front of him and all he can do is watch; the man wielding the knife suddenly has absolutely no power in the room. They really were kissing, but the confrontation was in Hendrix’s head. He instead drives back to the field and has an extremely emotional meltdown comprised of screaming, yelling, and crying. John scolds Reath and Elodie as Hendrix sits by the pig head for the last time, reading his poems to himself. In conjunction with other lessons he learned throughout the movie, he finds out that he had given himself the answer all along in the form of a poem and never saw it before. Right when he realizes what the solution to his mental prison is, the farmer returns. He angrily storms towards Hendrix with his shotgun only to move past him and reveal that he sees “It” too. The farmer’s character is a metaphor for what Hendrix will become if he doesn’t accept himself for who he is. The final shot of the movie is Hendrix finally loving this unacceptable part of himself and understanding it’ll always be there, all he can do is accept it, coming to terms with his trauma and mental illness.
Directed by Charles Lednicky (USA)