SUNDANCIN’ IN THE DARK

Despite a beautiful backdrop of snowy mountains, doom & gloom are featured in too many of the film festival’s offerings

PARK CITY, Utah — What do “Reservoir Dogs,” “Napoleon Dynamite,” “Clerks” and “Wet Hot American Summer” all have in common? The Sundance Film Festival.

Many of your favorite cult-y movies were first screened at the 42-year-old annual event in the mountains. It has a long history of proudly embracing subversion and discovering weirdos, such as Quentin Tarantino and Wes Anderson, decades before they started making big-budget odes to Hollywood or setting their lush epics in Görlitz.

But it’s beginning to feel different up here on the ski slopes, and not because of altitude sickness and the enhanced effects of booze.

This year and last, lightness was in as short supply as oxygen. Instead, the fest favored ripped-fromthe-headlines documentaries and narrative films with an emphasis on social issues. Not only can this become depressing en masse — I took in 20 films — but the January festival sets the tone for the year to come. And that tone is gloom.

“Four Good Days,” starring Mila Kunis and Glenn Close, is about a heroin addict; “The Father,” starring Olivia Colman and Anthony Hopkins, explores dementia; “Worth,” with Michael Keaton, looks at the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund. We learn how hard Taylor Swift’s life is in the documentary “Miss Americana” and how hard Hillary Clinton’s life is in “Hillary.” Even “Ren & Stimpy” has a morose backstory of verbal abuse and #MeToo culture, as shown in “Happy Happy Joy Joy: The Ren & Stimpy Story.” Some were good, some were bad. All were downers.

Call me a celluloid conspiracy theorist, but could this have to do with the sudden, enormous impact of streaming services?

Sundance is an acquisition festival, meaning it’s like a yard sale for movies. Many independent films premiere here with no distributor and therefore no plans for release. So, distributors fly in from LA and essentially go shopping, waging late-night bidding wars to secure their favorite films for millions of dollars.

Last year, two happy flicks were among the festival’s biggest deals: “Blinded by the Light” ($15 million to Warner Bros.) and “The Farewell” ($6 million to A24). Well, “Blinded,” while lovely, was a box-office flop, and “The Farewell” underperformed during awards season. At the 2020 festival, the whispers were that the major, traditional buyers were skittish as a result. And the rumors proved true. The big spenders were Amazon Prime, Hulu and Apple.

And what do streamers love? Real stories that get everybody talking, such as “Making a Murderer” (Netflix) or “Three Identical Strangers” (Hulu). No five words are more valuable to subscription services than “You need to watch this.” They also want to compete with HBO’s formidable documentary studio, which made a splash with last year’s “Leaving Neverland.”

Whatever the reason for the festival’s dark turn, Sundance — and the indie world at large — seems to be phasing out the kind of quirky, funny movies we love, such as “Little Miss Sunshine,” which premiered here in 2006 and went on to a Best Picture Oscar nod.

However, there were a few movies this year that brought me back to the glory days of cult indies we used to watch in college dorm rooms. “Spree,” which will prove a tough sell, is about a ride-share driver who goes on a murderous rampage . . . and livestreams it. “Zola” is a comedy thriller based on a real stripper’s Twitter thread about being kidnapped by a pimp. And “Bad Hair” is a satirical horror film in the mold of “Child’s Play” or “The Twilight Zone,” in which a woman becomes possessed by — wait for it — a killer weave.