The Stimming Pool review – a unique, enchanting… | Little White Lies

The Stim­ming Pool review – a unique, enchant­i­ng experience

27 Mar 2025 / Released: 28 Mar 2025

Empty indoor swimming pool with toys scattered on the floor, yellow and black swimsuit on person standing next to the pool.
Empty indoor swimming pool with toys scattered on the floor, yellow and black swimsuit on person standing next to the pool.
4

Anticipation.

Formal experimentation, collective creation, schlock-horror gore… we’re in.

4

Enjoyment.

A unique, enchanting experience.

4

In Retrospect.

The film’s innovative approach finds a new, resonant way to tell neurodiverse stories.

The Neu­ro­cul­tures Col­lec­tive and Steven East­wood present a world per­ceived through autism in this won­der­ful­ly exper­i­men­tal, hybrid endeavour.

A B‑movie afi­ciona­do intro­duces a grue­some ani­mat­ed hor­ror at a packed screen­ing; an office work­er nav­i­gates the world while mask­ing their autis­tic nature; peo­ple are mea­sured and test­ed in an eerie ware­house lab­o­ra­to­ry. And watch­ing over these tonal­ly, styl­is­ti­cal­ly diverse scenes is a mys­te­ri­ous spir­it ani­mal, sprung from the pages of a pic­ture book.

The Stim­ming Pool, a hybrid film co-cre­at­ed by the Neu­ro­cul­tures Col­lec­tive (a group of five neu­ro­di­verse artists) and artist-film­mak­er Steven East­wood, takes an exper­i­men­tal approach to cap­tur­ing what it’s like to be neu­ro­di­ver­gent in a world not made for those who are dif­fer­ent. Aim­ing to go beyond being straight­for­ward­ly about’ the autis­tic expe­ri­ence, the film instead for­mal­ly reflects that expe­ri­ence. The cre­ators employ an autis­tic cam­era’, which drifts between var­i­ous char­ac­ters and envi­ron­ments and across the bound­ary between doc­u­men­tary and fic­tion, lend­ing the film its shapeshift­ing quality.

Beau­ti­ful­ly shot by After­sun cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Gre­go­ry Oke, the film pulls from a deep well of ref­er­ences – the col­lec­tive have cit­ed Richard Linklater’s Slack­er, its exquis­ite corpse struc­ture, as an inspi­ra­tion for the float­ing focus of The Stim­ming Pool. Its cre­ators, sim­i­lar­ly, want­ed to resist con­ven­tion­al, neu­rotyp­i­cal approach­es to film­mak­ing. In its oblique, non-lin­ear style, The Stim­ming Pool is quite unlike any­thing else out there. So – mis­sion accomplished.

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