"I Feel Like Neve Campbell”: The Neverending Purgatory of Tri-State Hustle in Tina Krause’s LIMBO

Always crashing in the same car, always smoking in the same bar, always dissociating under industrial drone, always fending off another perv, always crowded by the same Jersey jerks, always wrapping another SOV joint.  Just another day in the armpit of America.

Tina Krause, known for starring in no-budget W.A.V.E. productions, breaks out to direct this experimental mood piece scuzz best described by its title: Limbo.  I don’t know if Krause filmed in New Jersey, where W.A.V.E. churned out gore and nudity loaded videodrama based on wackos’ mail-in scripts. But enough down’n’dirty Turnpike accents, rusted wastescapes, and a general sick-of-it-all attitude reminds me of home sweet trash pit: The Garden State.

Life in New Jersey, or the general suburban New York City area, kinda reeks. You scrape to live spitting distance from some bustling hub too expensive to visit. Most permanent residents? Boomers who commute. Sometimes the cramped and cultureless atmosphere can wear a psyche down until it feels drained as a wraith flashing in and out of Limbo. Bruce Springsteen serves as our state spokesman, and strip malls provide the only refuge hang. What a grind to work in the service industry slinging beers to a bunch of chuckleheads with dad ponytails and neckbeards in some dive off Route 1 or behind Starland Ballroom or even worse, at a Seaside party spot. What a chore drowning in local yokels so thick a psy-vamp dressed for the Ren Faire seems like the most subversive element!

Krause’s movie perfectly captures the malaise that seeps into your very bones when you’re locked into the megacity between Boston and Washington D.C. The sprawl has no soul.  The night sky seeps orange. One grind bleeds into the next until clowning with some wasteoids at a comic book store or maybe diving into a basement show full of too familiar faces offers the only escape.

Life in the Tri-State Area is Limbo, Tina! Glad this ambitious cinewhatsit scraped deep enough to ring true for genreheads yearning for more. 

Product details (and purchase link)

LIMBO (AGFA + Bleeding Skull!)

- New transfer from the original S-VHS master tape
- Commentary track with Tina Krause and the Bleeding Skull! team
- Archival behind-the-scenes documentary
- ANSWERING MACHINE short film by Tina Krause
- Fantastic Fest Q&A with Tina Krause and Bleeding Skull's Annie Choi
- EATEN ALIVE, a W.A.V.E. Productions short starring Tina Krause