My Summer Lair Chapter #324: Have You Seen The Canadian Sooka?
In Kourtney Roy’s Kryptic, “A woman searches for a missing monster hunter amongst her growing realization that she is inescapably linked to the creature being pursued.”
Indeed this My Summer Lair conversation with Kryptic’s director Kourtney Roy opens with her sharing that she’s talked to someone who has telepathically convened with Bigfoot. Woah. I honestly see no reason to doubt Kourtney. Sure, why not?
Kryptic is Kourtney Roy’s directorial debut. Before that Kourtney’s business card reads she is an artist and a photographer. (Check her out on IG.) She lived for a period of time in Vancouver, though she currently resides in Paris. (Hence my bonjour to open this conversation.)
Kryptic stars Chloe Pirrie who plays Kay, a woman obsessed with the Canadian Sooka, which is a cryptid Kourtney created for this movie. I asked Kourtney about that…it’s gotta be fun to make up your own monster with their own folklore.
In the woods (sigh, it’s always the woods!) Kay spots the Sooka and is frozen. That scene captures a fascinating tension. We go into the woods to see these strange creatures yet when the grand moment arrives it can be debilitating. You can’t unsee certain moments, you know?
Following that peculiar encounter Kryptic becomes an unsteady fairy tale about a woman searching for the truth but she doesn’t really know what that truth is, exactly. The subconscious is often speaking but nobody is correctly translating what it’s saying.
There’s also lots of goo and goop, so much mucus.
While Kay searches for truth…viewers question reality. In Kryptic it’s difficult to trust reality, time is shifty like a con man with a heart of gold.
So…maybe, perhaps…the Sooka is real? Kryptic is a slow movie, just as many puzzling creatures in the dark woods move with a slow deliberate pace…it’s an unusual experience.
There are 2 pressing questions and they’re related:
Is any of this real? Is Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster or UFOs (aliens) is any of this real? You can apply that question to ghosts, I suppose but let’s focus on the woods.
The best X-Files episodes were shot in Vancouver and across British Columbia: in those dark and lovely woods.
If your answer is no, none of this is real well that’s the end of the conversation…we can still go grab a slice of pizza.
However, if your answer is yes…the obvious question is: have you seen anything? Would you want to see something?
I’m at My Summer Lair for all my socials: Twitter, IG, Bluesky…My Summer Lair. Remember the goofy Ghostbusters commercial they made in the first movie? “We’re ready to believe you!”
I believe the world is stranger than we can understand. And I suspect our arrogance limits our curiosity.
One Programming Note: Kryptic stars Chloe Pirrie who you can see in Department Q on Netflix, highly recommend that first season. #SetTheVCR for that.
Kryptic @ W • T • F
Host Sammy Younan
Recorded: Wednesday, April 30, 2025 at 11:30 am (EST)
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