Let's backtrack for a moment. Yes, the film tracks the story of a man played by director and writer himself Brian McGuire who is emotionally and psychologically crippled. He is an awkward man who spends his days in sheer paranoia and living a methodical lifestyle of a recluse with the unhealthy routine of reality TV watching, playing pointless video games and obsessively masturbating to webcam girls. What started this descent into madness? The traumatic experience was the abrupt break up with his girlfriend, which in itself speaks volumes on the conventional perception of masculinity having lost all meaning of machismo and acquired self-hating vulnerabilities and a need to be loved.
There is no linear narrative as such. It is more a surreal and strangely collected and chronological series of events. It's almost as if McGuire's vision worked on a series of impulses written on a page more than lines and structures. Yet, this structure of vignettes plays out to a maddening frenzy. Each of the segments is profoundly funny and yet deeply sad. Not to mention that a constant creepy soundtrack as well as the sharp editing makes the overall work very unsettling. Perhaps we can even call the project an experimental excercise. But what is remarkable is that, as Window Licker progresses, we soon forget the gimmick of the way in which it was shot and subconciously start to focus on its themes and atmospheres. And that, is precisely what makes it such a success.
In many ways, this vision of modern surrealism does play upon the new generation of autism, paranoia and our reality projected through the internet that has been generated by the technical advancements of our times and that have coated the world we live in with absurdity. Nevertheless, Window Licker is also a direct descendant of films that have been made before, and perhaps were even more prolific in the sixties when experimentations with drugs and meds led way to a free form of cinema. After all, if Dalton Trumbo's Johnny Got His Gun was concerned with war and conscience, today our first world concerns are equally as dangerous and that is why Window Licker is also, ultimately, a film which we can all relate to.
