7/15/15 (Part One): Peachfuzz Still Loves You, Little Buckaroo

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awkward films, Best of 2015, cinema, co-writers, confessions, Creep, dark comedies, disturbing films, feature-film debut, Film, film reviews, found-footage, found-footage films, Funny Games, horror, horror films, insanity, isolated estates, lake house, Man Bites Dog, Mark Duplass, Movies, multiple writers, obsession, Patrick Brice, Peachfuzz, psychopaths, small cast, The Puffy Chair, trilogy, unsettling, videographer for hire, writer-director-actor

Suppose that you’re a freelance videographer and you’ve just stumbled upon one of those “too-good-to-be-true”-type Craigslist ads: you know, the ones that promise lots of money for what seems like a surprisingly small amount of work? In this case, the job offers a cool grand for just a few hour’s work…not too shabby, eh? When you get to the address, you find out that it’s in a really picturesque, isolated mountain town, at the top of a long, wending hill. Once there, you discover that your prospective employer is the dictionary definition of a meek, unassuming guy…basically, the kind of guy that no one would cross the street to avoid, although they might do so to steal his lunch money.

This guy, he seems like a nice enough dude but he has a few quirks: he really likes to hug, for one thing, and he has a rather unsettling propensity for jumping out from around corners and trying (and succeeding) to startle you. He also keeps a wolf Halloween mask in his closet, which he’s named “Peachfuzz” and written a jaunty tune about. No biggie, though: the guy’s house is really nice, modern, well-lit and comfy…no piles of bodies, bone chandeliers or Sawyer-approved home decor to be found here, doncha know! In every way, shape and form, this guy is the poster-boy for middle-of-the-road, plain-ol’-vanilla normalcy.

After talking to this friendly, unassuming fella, he makes a pretty good case for needing your services: turns out that he’s been diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor and he wants you to make a “My Life (1993)-esque” video document for his unborn son. He may not be around to raise him, but this dedicated soon-to-be-dad wants to leave his child with as much of his wisdom and attention as he can: get the life lessons out of the way right now, while he’s still around to give them, and leave his son a legacy for the future.

All well and good, no alarm bells whatsoever…if anything, this guy might be in the running for “Father of the Year,” unborn child or not. After paying you upfront (talk about a totally upstanding dude!), your humble host decides that it’s time to get down to business: you were paid to film, so film you will. The first thing on the agenda? This totally normal, average guy wants to walk his son through the mechanics of “tubby time,” so he strips naked and jumps in the bathtub, all while you keep filming. And then things get really weird.

This, in a nutshell, is Patrick Brice and Mark Duplass’ intensely awkward, genuinely disturbing Creep (2014), a two-person, found-footage examination of obsession, insanity, loneliness and the often terrifying “real faces” that supposedly normal folks hide from the world at large. Despite the inherent simplicity of the set-up and format (Brice and Duplass co-write the film, as well as starring in it, while Brice also served as the director…at no point do we ever get another actor on-screen aside from these two), Creep is endlessly engaging and so tightly plotted that it’s almost seamless. Creep is not only a first-rate found-footage film, it’s also one of the best, most unsettling films of the year.

The secret weapon here, as in many other indie productions, is wunderkind Mark Duplass. Although perhaps best known for his pioneering work in mumblecore and for his role on the relentlessly hilarious TV show The League, Duplass and his brother, Jay, have been involved with an almost dizzying variety of projects, either as writer, director, actor or all three: The Puffy Chair (2005), Baghead (2008), Cyrus (2010), Greenberg (2010), Jeff, Who Lives at Home (2011), Your Sister’s Sister (2011), Safety Not Guaranteed (2012), Zero Dark Thirty (2012) and Mercy (2014), to name but a few.

In this case, Duplass has teamed with Patrick Brice, whose follow-up to Creep, The Overnight (2015), made big waves at various film festivals this year. Described as the first in a trilogy, Creep is as low-budget and bare-bones as it gets: in essence, the entire film consists of Duplass’ Josef creeping out Brice’s Aaron in every way imaginable, with the tension slowly ratcheting up until the entire film threatens to explode like a busted water heater. To make things even odder and more uncomfortable, Creep is also full of pitch-black, deadpan humor, much of which walks an incredibly thin line between making one burst out laughing (Josef’s “Charlie Day-worthy” Peachfuzz song is an easy highlight) and making one cringe down in their seat, attempting vainly to become invisible.

Perhaps the greatest triumph, here, above and beyond the masterfully economic production (“anyone” can do this…provided, of course, that they’re as talented as Brice and Duplass) is the way that the film sinks its hooks into us and refuses to let go. Unless you’re a complete horror neophyte, you’ll probably be able to predict where the film eventually ends up. The route to get there, however, is a particularly thorny one, full of red herrings, dead ends, misplaced assumptions and cinematic slight of hand: at one point, we seem to be witnessing the natural progression of what we assume will happen, only to have it be revealed as recorded footage from earlier. Brice and Duplass don’t engage in the same sort of meta-mind-fuckery that Haneke did in Funny Games (1997) but they’ve managed to set up show just one door down, which is a pretty neat trick all by itself.

Creep is a strange film, no two ways about it. It’s a surprisingly complex narrative for such a short, deceptively simple film: Brice and Duplass seem to be telling a pretty straight-forward genre story about a creepy guy (think Psycho (1960) stripped down to a two-person drama) but constantly throw in allusions, asides and nods to much bigger, darker things happening in the background. The film could be about the hidden dangers lurking behind any potentially smiling face but it could also be about the very nature of truth and perception, sort of a Schrodinger test to see if “absolute truth” exists outside of our individual understandings. It could be about loneliness and mental illness but it could also be about the horrifying randomness of the universe, the howlingly unknowable cosmic coin toss that puts some folks on the road to happiness while others end up mulch.

There are moments in the film (the harrowing bit involving Josef’s ringing cell phone, that amazing final long shot) that are as classically “horror” as the genre gets, while other scenes (tubby time, the unpleasant Peachfuzz story, the visit to the healing spring) would be odd fits in any film, regardless of the generic focus. Creep is such an amazing piece of work because it somehow makes all these disparate elements fit together in a wholly organic way: Brice and Duplass’ film could be about any or all of these things or it could be about none of them.

While Brice has a few off moments, acting-wise (some of his close-up asides to the camera feel more like delivering lines than just “being”), Duplass has such a singular focus that it’s difficult to see where the actor stops and the character begins. At times, I was reminded of Duplass’ archly awesome asshole from The League, a totally cool dude who fucks with people just to watch their reactions. At other times, however, that odd combo of sweetly goofy happiness and reptilian, dispassionate reserve would chill me straight to my blood cells: it’s always difficult to get under a lifelong horror fanatic’s skin, especially where more modern horrors are concerned…Creep makes it seem distressingly easy.

As the first film in a proposed trilogy, I’m deathly curious to see where Brice and Duplass go from here: while the film ends in a way that seems to “pan back” and give us a wider overview of the evil we’ve witnessed, I’d hate to think that Brice and Duplass might get lazy and just give us more of the same in future installments. As it stands, Creep was one of the most uncomfortable, unpleasant, powerful and astounding little films I managed to see this year: I’d love to be able to say the same thing about the next two, whenever Brice and Duplass decide to unleash them upon the world.

For now, however, I’m going to double-down on my long-standing paranoia regarding other people: the world might be full of totally nice, cool individuals, but as long as there are Josefs out there, I think I’ll be a little more comfortable behind my locked door, thank you very much. As for answering Craigslist ads? Fuggedaboudit.

 

6/8/15 (Part One): What Would You Do For the Money, Honey?

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13 Sins, Amanda Fuller, Andrew Wheeler, Autopsy, bets, Brody Gusar, Cheap Thrills, cheating husbands, cinema, co-writers, dark comedies, dark films, David Chirchirillo, David Koechner, desperate times, desperation, directorial debut, disturbing films, dramas, drug abuse, E.L. Katz, Ethan Embry, film reviews, films, Funny Games, greed, Home Sick, husband-wife relationship, infidelity, jealousy, Laura Covelli, Mads Heldtberg, money problems, moral dilemmas, Movies, multiple cinematographers, multiple writers, old friends, Pat Healy, Pop Skull, Sara Paxton, Sebastian Wintero Hansen, self-mutilation, The ABCs of Death 2, thrillers, Trent Haaga, violent films, wagers, What Fun We Were Having, Would You Rather

There’s nothing quite like pure, undiluted desperation to help someone solidify their personal beliefs. Sure, you might fancy yourself a pacifist, a vegan, a Creationist, an atheist, a philanthropist, an activist or just a plain, old nice person. When the chips are really down, however, and you have a gun to your head (either literally or figuratively), how many of those deeply held beliefs will actually outlast the most primal emotion of them all: desperate need? If it came down to saving yourself and/or your loved ones, I’d wager to say that the staunchest vegetarian could be made to choke down a steak, the most honest among us could be compelled to lie their asses off and the most pie-in-the-sky do-gooder could, in fact, be persuaded to become an absolute monster.

In an age where income inequity is at an all-time high, the gaping abyss between the “haves” and the “have-nots” has never been wider or deeper. As conspicuous consumption approaches a level not seen since the vaunted ’80s (Gordon Gekko would absolutely rule the 2010s) and the middle-class continues to shrink into oblivion, American society begins, more and more, to resemble the grotesque, self-cannibalistic plutocracy that Brian Yuzna introduced us to in Society (1989). Eat the rich? Not if they eat you first, baby!

E.L. Katz’s directorial debut, Cheap Thrills (2013), takes these twin notions (the desperation of the poor and the mercenary callousness of the ultra-rich) and mashes them expertly together, coming up with a film that’s equal parts pitch-black comedy, endurance match and twisted social commentary. In many ways, Katz’s film makes an interesting companion piece to Michael Haneke’s equally bleak Funny Games (1997), showcasing a world where unrelenting cruelty is the norm and any sense of “humanity” is snuffed out quicker than a candle in a hurricane. While it’s never really a “fun” ride, per se, Cheap Thrills is a masterful film, one of the smartest, most unpleasant movies to stick in our craws in a long, long time.

Our hapless, downtrodden “hero” is Craig Daniels (Pat Healy), a former hot-shot writer who now toils away in a garage, his ability to provide for his wife, Audrey (Amanda Fuller), and new baby slipping away more and more each day. When Craig gets the double-whammy of being laid off and receiving an eviction notice on the same day, he decides to throw the towel in and head to the local bar rather than have an extremely unpleasant conversation with his loving wife. Craig’s not a bad guy, he’s just completely overwhelmed: with his glasses, thinning hair and nerdy demeanor, there’s nothing about him that indicates he can fight his way out of a paper sack, much less a crippling financial crisis.

While drowning his sorrows, Craig happens to bump into an old high school buddy, Vince (Ethan Embry). Like Craig, Vince has also fallen on hard times but he’s an altogether more carnivorous beast than his former friend is: he’s been to prison, has the kind of nervous, suspicious glare that’s meant to keep the world at arm’s length and currently makes ends meet as a strong-arm debt collector. He once broke a guy’s arm for $80, while the guy’s young daughter watched…in other words, Vince does not give one single, flying fuck about the rest of the world. But, yeah: it’s always good to see old friends, right?

As the pair continue to, awkwardly, reconnect, they happen to come into the orbit of another couple of bar patrons, the incredibly conspicuous Colin (David Koechner) and his impossibly bored wife, Violet (Sara Paxton). It’s Violet’s birthday, according to Colin, and the self-proclaimed ultra-rich husband (he brags about a $10K bottle of tequila sitting in his luxurious mansion, for starters) wants to give her an ultra-memorable night.

To that end, Colin begins offering Craig and Vince money for performing a series of “tasks” that range from being the first to drink a shot ($50) to slapping a stripper’s ass ($200) to punching a massive, meat-head bouncer right in the nose ($500). Through it all, Vince is as eager as can be, heartily leaping into whatever Colin commands, regardless of the danger, illegality, etc…as long as he doesn’t have to “suck Craig’s dick,” Vince is down for whatever the night entails, especially once Colin busts out the Peruvian marching powder. Craig, on the other hand, is much less enthusiastic: he may be desperate but he’s also a happily married man and a pretty decent guy…snorting coke, hanging out at strip clubs and getting into brawls really isn’t his thing.

When the party moves to Colin and Violet’s mansion, however, the whole thing begins to tilt on its axis. Vince becomes increasingly excitable and violent, Colin’s “tasks” become increasingly dark (self-mutilation is but one of the party favors) and Violet seems to be throwing herself at Craig with the kind of zeal normally reserved for hawks hunting squirrels. Despite desperately needing the proffered cash in order to support his family, Craig faces one moral quandary after another. Will he be forced to choose between his basic humanity or his family’s needs, making the terrible decision to either be a bad person or a bad husband/father? Or, in the end, will he be turned into the living equivalent of a child’s toy, bent and abused due to the capricious desires of a mysterious, all-powerful “benefactor”? They may be cheap thrills but, in the end, Craig and Vince might just end up paying the highest price of all.

Similar to the recent upswing in doppelgänger films, the current trend definitely seems to favor movies in which normally good, deserving members of the middle-lower class are forced to do terrible things in order to secure financial stability, usually at the urging of the filthy rich. Of these films, three managed to really catch my eye: Daniel Stamm’s 13 Sins (2014), David Guy Levy’s Would You Rather (2014) and E.L. Katz’s Cheap Thrills. While 13 Sins was a blackly-comic geekfest that tended to accentuate the numerous outrageous setpieces, Would You Rather was an altogether more serious affair, albeit one tempered by the inherent bat-shittery that is the incomparable Jeffrey Combs. Unlike the colorful insanity of Stamm’s film, Levy’s tense thriller focused more on physical and psychological torture, making it the much more relentless, if repetitious, of the two.

Katz’s Cheap Thrills splits the difference and ends up the strongest of the three, thanks in no small part to the excellent performances and a truly twisted script (courtesy of Troma’s Trent Haaga and David Chirchirillo, who served as a PA on Haag’s equally twisted Chop (2011)). While the film does become a bit predictable towards the end (if you’ve seen one of these films, you have a pretty good idea of how most of them end), there are still plenty of surprises and left-field revelations. To be honest, I would have expected nothing less from the demented scribe behind The Toxic Avenger IV (2000) and the dreamy, if no less disturbed, Deadgirl (2008).

Acting-wise, the film is grounded by its four leads, each of whom pulls an equal share of the weight. Healy, no stranger to genre fans thanks to performances in everything from Magnolia (1999) to The Innkeepers (2011) to Starry Eyes (2014) is fantastically balanced as the hapless Craig. In order for the film to work, we have to be 100% on Craig’s side, even as the situation gradually degrades from “awkward” to “awful”: if we stop supporting him too early, we lose any moral compass that the film might possess. It’s to Healy’s immense credit that we always buy what Craig is selling: this isn’t just an effortless performance, this is an actor actually “becoming” their character and, as always, it’s a real treat to watch. Suffice to say that once Healy really gets to cut loose, in the film’s final third, it’s the absolute best release to the built-up tension possible.

As Craig’s foil, Vince could have been one of those eternally reprehensible characters who practically demands a comeuppance: think of the hateful jock assholes who are always first on the firing line in any good slasher. Thanks to Embry’s all-in performance, however, Vince comes across as much more complex and fully rounded than he might have seemed on paper. Makes no bones about it: Vince isn’t anyone’s definition of a “nice guy.” Like Craig, however, he is a pathetically desperate individual and, agree with his tactics or not, it’s hard for us to not, at the very least, empathize with (some of) his choices. Vince is a battered, broken person and he holds on to only truism, clutching it as tight as possible: money makes the world run and if you don’t have any, you just don’t exist. Embry, who was so good in the recent Late Phases (2013), has experienced the same kind of genre career resurgence that Elijah Wood has: let’s hope he keeps striking while the iron is sizzling.

Meanwhile, Sara Paxton (who also did time with Healy in Ti West’s The Innkeepers) and David Koechner (who is, perhaps, the living embodiment of “Oh, hey: that guy!) are pitch-perfect as the jaded, sinister rich couple. While Paxton spends much of the film staring at her smart phone with enough ennui to choke Sofia Coppola, she’s also responsible for some of the film’s most unsubtle, uncomfortable scenes. Her timing is perfect: the part where she blandly asks Craig if he wants her to email him photos of the night is superb, as is the one where she nonchalantly suggests that fucking her will, in fact, make him feel better. Although she never gets as much to do as Koechner, Paxton is a vital component to everything and her interplay with her on-screen husband is pretty flawless.

For his part, Koechner balances the smarmy and sinister sides of Colin with uncanny ease: from scene to scene, it’s all but impossible to predict which way his temperament will go, which produces an absolutely essential sense of sustained tension. Colin is a filthy rich vulgarian, unlike Comb’s refined aristocrat from Would You Rather: he’s the living embodiment of the trashy “nouveau riche,” the start-up millionaire who makes up for lost time by throwing money at anything that moves. Alternately goofy, charismatic, slovenly and whip-smart, Colin is a helluva character and Koechner brings him to brilliant, roaring life.

From beginning to end, Cheap Thrills is exceptionally well-made: Andrew Wheeler and Sebastian Wintero Hansen’s cinematography is consistently warm and well-composed, while Mads Heldtberg, who also did the flat-out excellent score for You’re Next (2011), manages to avoid telegraphing anything…no stingers or musical jump scares here, folks. Throughout it all, Katz displays an absolute deft touch, whether it’s through his ability to draw out the tension, the exacting interplay of the performers or the way in which he makes the most of claustrophobic locations like Colin and Violet’s living room. Most importantly, Katz is able to execute all of the film’s major setpieces (none of which I would dream of spoiling) without a hitch: like puppets on a string, Katz hauls us from one shocker to the next.

While there’s a lot to love in Cheap Thrills, the film is, undoubtedly, a pretty nasty piece of work: emotionally similar to the aforementioned Funny Games, Cheap Thrills couches its essential nihilism in some fancy duds but it’s still nihilism, none the less. I’m willing to wager that many folks (the same folks who had similar issues with 13 Sins and Would You Rather, naturally) will find this proximity to utter desperation to be both wearying and the dictionary definition of a “bummer.” For those who either find themselves slipping through the cracks or know someone who has, however, Cheap Thrills might just be one of the more perfect depictions of our modern malaise.

At the end of the day, I’m sure it would comfort us all to know that we could, heartily and without reservation, tell people like Colin and Violet to take their money and shove it where the sun will never shine. The true horror of Cheap Thrills, of course, is that none of us will ever really be sure until we actually have to make that choice. At the end of the day, Katz’s film asks a very simple question: what would you do for the money, honey? In our brave new world, you might not like the answer.

8/31/14 (Part Two): 15 Going on 90

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abused children, Alexis Kavyrchine, Anais Demoustier, Celine, cinema, drama, feature-film debut, film reviews, films, foreign films, foster kids, French films, Funny Games, homeless children, l'Enfance du Mal, Lolita, Ludmila Mikael, mother-daughter relationships, Movies, Olivier Coussemacq, Pascal Greggory, Sweet Evil, Sylvain Dieuaide, writer-director

When we first see Celine (Anais Demoustier), the wise-beyond-her-years teenager who forms the chaotic focal point of writer/director Olivier Coussemacq’s Sweet Evil (2010), she’s literally looking in from the outside: specifically, we see her framed in such a way that she appears to be physically separating the couple of Henri (Pascal Greggory) and Nathalie Van Eyck (Ludmila Mikael) as they dine at their kitchen table, unaware of their hidden observer. It’s a smart, canny bit of cinematography and one that will be repeated to good effect throughout the dark, thorny narrative. Indeed, throughout the course of the film, Celine will handily succeed in ripping the troubled couple to shreds, using them as pawns in a game of her own devising, although this is anything by a one-player: Henri and Nathalie, in the end, have just as much a hand in their inevitable destruction as Celine does. In a world of gray, with no heavily defined sense of morality, we see that everyone is capable of evil: whether a supposedly innocent young girl or a theoretically incorruptible judge, humanity is always but a hairbreadth away from its own absolute destruction.

Without a doubt, Celine is quite the complicated character. When not shaking down perverted older men with the aid of her male accomplish, Romain (Sylvain Dieuaide), she wiles away her time in the garden house of the well-to-do but aloof Van Eycks. The jig is up, in a way, when Henri happens to catch Celine on the property one night: she tells him that she’s a 16-year-old foster child who’s run away from her foster home, although this conflicts with her earlier admission to a wannabe john that she’s actually 14. With a little reverse-psychology and a whole lot of manipulation, Celine wheedles her way into the judge’s good graces, although she seems to have a bit of an agenda that extends beyond finding a roof, four walls and a hearty meal. Indeed, Celine tips her hand fairly early when she “innocently” proclaims that being a judge must be nice, since people respect the law, but wonders how many innocent people have been unfairly locked away. What if, she reasons to Henri, life has really left them no choice? There’s always a choice, Henri snorts back. As we’ll come to see, this is absolutely true, although clarification may be necessary: there may always be choices but they aren’t always good ones.

As Celine insinuates herself into the Van Eyck household, she stirs a hornets’ nest of repressed desire, barely concealed anger, resentment and misplaced parental instincts. She plays the couple against each other by appealing to each partner’s basest needs: Henri desires her, sexually, while Nathalie seeks to mother her as substitute for her own inability to have children (in a telling bit of character development, the childless Nathalie is obsessed with dolls, although Celine complains that they all look like “old dead children” to her).

It turns out that Celine has a plan, however, a rather diabolical scheme that involves Henri, her incarcerated mother and the increasingly unstable Romain, a young man whose favorite hobby involves stabbing innocent dogs. As Celine moves everything towards her end game, Henri’s weakness may spell the couple’s doom, while Nathalie’s ferocious desire to be a mother may mark her evolution into something other than Henri’s “faithful spouse.”

Tone-wise, Coussemacq’s film certainly recalls the work of misanthropic German filmmaker Michael Haneke, in particular his most famous film, Funny Games (1997). There’s an austere severity and frigidity to the film that nearly constant, a solemn tone that seems to be heightened by the almost playful musical score. The world of Sweet Evil is a cold one, all arctic whites, blues and chilly winter sunlight: in certain ways, the film’s look serves as a compliment to Tomas Vinterberg’s equally chilly The Hunt (2012). As previously mentioned, Alexis Kavyrchine’s cinematography is consistently exceptional, serving up not only beautifully staged images but also expanding on the film’s themes by way of the imagery: Kavyrchine has a particular way of shooting the trio of Henri, Nathalie and Celine that always manages to place one person between the other two, a perfect visual representation of the characters’ inner conflicts.

Coussemacq’s script, like Kavyrchine’s cinematography, is exceptionally smart: one of my favorite sustained bits was the notion that all of Celine’s lies end up being halfway between reality and fiction. It’s an idea that’s made explicit regarding her age (she introduces herself to the first john as being 14, tells Henri that she’s 16 but is actually 15) but is revealed in other, more subtle ways throughout the narrative. Coussemacq also has a particular way with dialogue, giving Demoustier plenty of choice lines to chew on. The development of Nathalie’s character was also quite impressive, particular given that the disparate elements of her personality could easily have across as “movie-shorthand” but feel much more organic than that. Her work with women’s rights parallels nicely with Celine’s more dastardly machinations and allows for a nice sense of evolution in the third act. Craft-wise, Sweet Evil is top-notch filmmaking.

While the cast is generally good, Demoustier is pretty impressive as the less-than-innocent waif: she has a way with subtle facial expressions and vocal inflections that manages to reveal hidden dimensions within her character. Most impressively, the 27-year-old actress is pretty convincing as a 15-year-old, no mean feat in itself (just ask any of the middle-aged “teenagers” that frolicked through most ’80s slasher flicks). Demoustier manages to walk a fine line between playing Celine as a hard-edged loner, a dutiful daughter and a confused teenager: one of the better aspects of Sweet Evil is the way in which Celine’s ultimate character is left up for the audience’s interpretation. Viewed from various angles, it’s possible to see Celine as a cold-blooded criminal, the shattered product of abuse, a victim of the welfare system and a wiser-than-her-years “emotional con-artist.”

Ultimately, Sweet Evil is an atmospheric, well-acted and appropriately thorny (if occasionally confusing) film, the kind of movie, like The Hunt, that gives one plenty of food for thought once the final credits have rolled. If the film offers no easy answers, particularly regarding the character of Henri (it becomes exceedingly difficult to fully sympathize with Henri once one sits through the scene where he tries to sneak a peek at Celine’s sleeping body), it also offers plenty of interesting characters, a quick pace and a climax that handily splits the difference between tragic and ironic. I’m still not really sure how I feel about Celine, although I must admit to being completely swept up by her self-assurance: when she believes in herself that much, it’s kind of hard not to feel the same way, regardless of her ultimate goal.

1/24/14: The Right (and Wrong) Way to Bleed

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A Band Apart, Adam Wingard, Angela Jones, animal masks, auteur theory, Barry Corbin, booby-traps, cinema, Curdled, dark comedies, Film, Film auteurs, final girl, forensic-cleaning, Funny Games, Gecko Brothers, home invasion, horror films, Joe Swanberg, masked intruders, Movies, Quentin Tarantino, Reb Braddock, Reservoir Dogs, serial killers, Simon Barrett, The Strangers, Top Films of 2013, William Baldwin, You're Next

Becoming so irritated after viewing The Comedy that I thought I might develop hives, there was nothing for me to do but retreat back to the loving arms of a horror film: in this case, You’re Next. Turned out to be a wise move, since it made me completely forget about the previous dud. Had I not followed it up with the distressingly limp Curdled, this might have been game, set, match.

Sometimes, you just know a film is going to be good. Maybe you’ve read some reviews by critics you really trust. Maybe the film is made by one of your favorite directors, a filmmaker who’s never let you down (I’m lookin’ at you, Refn and Wheatley, you big, wonderful filmmakers, you!). Perhaps you’ve seen a great trailer or have been teased by some really cool promotional material. Whatever the reason, there are always a small group of films that we, the discerning viewer, are absolutely certain have to be amazing. When these films disappoint, there can be no worst feeling in the world: a massive buildup to nothing at all, months (or even years) of anticipation flushed down the can. When these films meet (or even surpass) our expectations, however, there is a very specific thing that is created: magic. I’ve been lucky enough to experience plenty of movie magic in my life and Adam Wingard’s You’re Next wears the wizard cloak loudly and proudly.

Quality films don’t just appear out of thin air, gift-wrapped and ready to blow our minds. Rather, they emerge organically, composed of quality ingredients, in the same way that a chef might prepare a gourmet meal. You have to have a great script, for thing, and an original (or, at least, semi-original) idea. You need great camera and sound work and an interesting production design. You, of course, will need good actors (extra points for great actors). Most importantly, however, you will need a unified vision to tie everything together. You can have a really good, fun, interesting film with only a few of these ingredients, don’t get me wrong: I’ve seen plenty of ’em. You cannot, however, have a magical film with any of the above mentioned items missing: it just can’t happen.

As far as individual pieces go, You’re Next is already looking like prep-time in a five-star restaurant. We have director Adam Wingard and writer Simon Barrett, the lethal team responsible (either together or apart) for Pop Skull, A Horrible Way to Die, segments in V/H/S, V/H/S 2, The ABCs of Death and Dead Birds. We get a pretty original idea: a bitchy, backstabbing family are celebrating a wedding anniversary when be-masked home invaders begin to slaughter them, only to have the tables turned as the hunters become the hunted. We have gorgeous cinematography by Andrew Palermo (according to his CV, You’re Next is one of only three features he’s worked on…someone get this guy some consistent work!) and excellent sound design. There’s a wicked sense of humor that permeates the proceedings but this is no horror-comedy. The violence is intense, memorable and visceral while avoiding the pornographic tendencies of films like Saw or Hostel: it also appears to be largely practical effects, which warms my heart.

At the risk of sounding like a swooning fanboy, there really isn’t much I can ding You’re Next for. In fact, there are several scenes in the film that have actually rocketed to the upper echelons of my “Baddest Ass Scenes Ever” list, including the one where Lamb Face takes a seat next to Larry Fessenden’s corpse on the couch: everything about the scene, from the lighting, to the score, to the slight way that Lamb Face cocks his head to the side are purely magical, a bracing example that the true power of cinema will always rely on the image.

The cast, featuring a quadrilogy of modern indie/horror mainstays (directors Ti West, Joe Swanberg, Larry Fessenden and writer Simon Barrett), is exquisite, with special praise due lead Sharni Vinson and Swanberg. Vinson is pitch-perfect in the role of, ostensibly, the clichéd “final girl.” She brings such an amazing sense of reality to the role, however, that she kicks the character up into high gear. Even better, Vinson’s Erin is not posited as some sort of invincible ass-kicker: she’s vulnerable, feels fear and is frequently unsure of herself. It’s just that, in times of strife, Erin can pull together the fortitude to stick a knife through someone’s skull: we’d all like to think we’d be so handy in a crisis. Swanberg, on the other hand, is an acid-etched delight as Drake. Playing the character as the height of crude, obnoxious, sarcastic, privileged assholery, Drake might seem like a refugee from The Comedy. Luckily, Swanberg is way to good an actor (and Barrett is way too good a writer) to let that happen. Hard as it is to believe, I found myself grudgingly liking this dickhead, over time: truth be told, I found myself liking almost all of the characters, including the masked killers. Swanberg, however, attacks his character with such lustful zeal that it truly is a joy to behold.

I won’t reveal any actual details of the film, since its many twists, turns and surprises are all part of its endless joys. Suffice to say that the opening is awesome, the ending is a stunner and everything in between is as hardy and robust as Charles Atlas on a good day. There’s even a great gag that pays homage to the “window trap” scene in Death Wish 3 (if you’ve seen DW3, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about). This is the kind of film that upends every genre convention it comes across, from the obligatory “pot of water boiling on the stove” bit to the reveal of the true nature of the killers. In some ways, You’re Next is like a bizarro-world mashup of The Strangers (masked intruders trying to get in) and Funny Games (unmasked intruders are already in), although this leap-frogs way over The Strangers.

Endlessly inventive, exceptionally well-made and infinitely fun, You’re Next isn’t just the best genre film I’ve seen since Stitches, it’s also one of the best films of 2013, even if I didn’t manage to see it until this year. Time to go make room on the shelf for a new classic: Wingard and Barrett did it again.

And then we have Curdled. Perhaps there’s no way that this film could grab my attention (and heart) after the phenomenal experience that was You’re Next. By the same token, I’m pretty sure there was no way this could be nearly as odious as The Comedy. Turns out I was right on both counts: this was nowhere near the quality of You’re Next and too (relatively) inoffensive and meek to be anywhere near as obnoxious as The Comedy.

Curdled begins in 1977, in Columbia, with young Gabriela. She’s a child who’s just witnessed the aftermath of a gory crime, beginning her life-long obsession with death. Flash-forward several years and Gabriela is now living in Miami and working for a forensic-cleaning crew: the folks who get to go into a crime scene and clean up the blood (and other bodily fluids) left over after the bodies are removed. She enjoys her job but becomes obsessed with a serial killer known as The Blue Blood Killer (he only kills wealthy women), especially after she finds a clue at a scene she’s cleaning. This all leads to a conclusion that seeks to answer the previously asked question: can a head talk after it’s been severed? The answer may (but probably won’t) surprise you.

Here’s the thing: Curdled, at least on paper, has a lot going for it. The film was discovered by Quentin Tarantino during a promotional tour for Reservoir Dogs and he was so taken with it that he decided to release it under his A Band Apart production company. The film actually features a couple of references to QT’s cinematic world (Gabriela is played by Angela Jones, the cab driver who picked up Bruce Willis in Pulp Fiction; a TV news report mentions the Gecko Brothers of From Dusk Till Dawn fame): unless these were added post-QT’s involvement, it seems fairly safe to say that writer/director Reb Braddock is a fan. There’s a decent turn by William Baldwin as the serial killer (no spoiler here since we learn this pretty early in the film) and a pretty great performance by character-actor-extraordinaire Barry Corbin as the owner of the forensics-cleaning company. The score is great and the opening credits sequence (various grisly deaths depicted as children’s sketches) is pretty genius.

Unfortunately, Curdled takes all of these various elements and doesn’t find much to do with them. The film is slow-paced, almost to the point of seeming inert, and wastes way to much time focusing on Angela Jones and her (admittedly) very expressive eyes. While Jones, Baldwin and Corbin are good, the rest of the cast really isn’t, with one of the most obnoxious characterizations courtesy of Mel Gorham as Gabriela’s cleaning partner, Elena. Gorham has a particular ability to make any line she delivers as flat as a pancake and I found myself wishing she would end up a victim awfully fast: alas, she survives.

There are certain elements and scenes that seem completely unnecessary, such as Gabriela’s reenactment of a murder scene via salsa dance. Let’s ponder that for just a moment. In a similar film/TV show, the reenactment would be a way for the investigator to gain new insight into the case (think Crossing Jordan). In Curdled, however, Gabriela learns nothing by dancing her way through the various positions of the body: it’s simply an excuse to have her twirl and flounce around for a bit. This idea, the notion of style for style’s sake, is the film’s fatal flaw: everything in Curdled is weak artifice and the entire film seems as substantial as cotton candy. By the time we reach the end and realize that the film has actually just been one long setup for a punch-line (remember the question earlier about the talking head? That’s the joke that the film spends almost 90 minutes answering).

At the end of the day, aside from some serious pacing issues and some questionable style choices (cutting back and forth between The Blue Blood Killer’s storylines and Gabriela’s tends to short-sheet both, to be honest), there isn’t much discernibly wrong with Curdled. It’s pretty much the definition of an average, middle-of-the-road indie flick, a film that probably wouldn’t have seen the light of day in 1996 without the support of Quentin. As it stands, you could watch worse films (like The Comedy or The Last Rites of Ransom Pride) but why don’t you just go watch You’re Next, instead?

1/11/14: Chills, Thrills and Groans

Tags

adventures, animated films, B-movies, bad movies, computer-animated, Daniel Craig, dark comedies, Edgar Wright, experimental film, Film, Film auteurs, Funny Games, German cinema, home invasion, hullaballoo, Indiana Jones, Michael Haneke, misanthropic, Nick Frost, Party of Five, SImon Pegg, Steven Spielberg, strange families, suspense, The Adventures of TinTin, The Butcher Brothers, The Hamiltons

Our quest to catch up now takes us to this past Saturday for another triple header. On this particular day, my viewing selections were tempered by the fact that I needed something to wash the taste of Funny Games out of my mouth: hence, the segue from that to Spielberg’s Adventures of TinTin. Now THAT’s the kind of counter-programming more festivals need to do!

Oy vey…talk about suffering for art…We’re all familiar with feel-good cinema: those gauzy, sweet, brightly colored bits of film fluff that usually posit nothing more challenging than a stubbed toe or a willfully spunky ingenue to shake things up. In a world that’s become increasingly cold and hostile, feel-good cinema can be the equivalent of a warm fire on a cold day, returning the essential humanity to an inhumane species.

Michael Haneke pisses all over feel-good cinema before burying it out in the desert. If the word “misanthropy” is defined as meaning, “the general hatred, distrust or disdain of the human species or human nature,” then Mr. Haneke may be one of the premiere misanthropes working in film today. Whether dealing with severely damaged, violent individuals (Benny’s Video, The Seventh Continent, The White Ribbon), the horrors of a violent society invading the sanctity of the home (Funny Games, The Time of the Wolf) or the erosion of life and love (The Piano Teacher, Amour), Haneke has never met a subject to dark or depressing to tear into. Despite his seeming disdain for people, Haneke has had a surprisingly successful career, achieving enough acclaim with his original 1997 version of Funny Games to warrant his American remake ten years later and culminating in Best Foreign Film and Best Actress nods for his most recent film, Amour.

I admit that I got to the Haneke party a little late, not jumping in until the remake of Funny Games. As a big Tim Roth fan, I took a chance, based on his presence, and was rewarded with something rather nasty and unpleasant. Nonetheless, I was intrigued and spent some time touring his back catalog, eventually arriving at his original version of Funny Games. Needless to say, I remember being thoroughly disturbed by the film and promptly sought to put it behind me. Flash forward many years and a lazy Saturday morning seemed like a perfect time to revisit the film and see if it still held any power. Short answer? Yes.

For those not familiar with the story, Funny Games is, ostensibly, a home invasion film. Three members of a family (parents and young son) are vacationing at their lakeside cottage, next to several other cabins and friends. The family is well-to-do, educated (while driving, they play a game of “Name that classical music concerto” and seem like nice enough people. Upon arriving at their cottage, they notice that their next-door-neighbors appear to be entertaining guests, a pair of young men dressed in tennis outfits. When one of the men appears at their doorstep to borrow some eggs, the family become trapped in a seemingly never-ending nightmare of violence, humiliation, torture and…well…funny games.

Part of the terrible, feral power of the film comes from how well-made it is. Rather than feeling (or looking) like a quickly dashed together bit of exploitation nastiness, Funny Games is an art film through and through. The opening, featuring an aerial view of their car driving through winding mountain roads, instantly reminds of Kubrick’s similar opening to The Shining. The film has a cold, clinical look that recalls Cronenberg’s early bio-medical chillers. The acting, particularly from the evil young men is impeccable and, at times, downright heartbreaking. The film has a terrific grasp of tension, feeding out just enough line to keep you hooked, then snapping it back ferociously when needed. Scenes play out for much longer than seem necessary, the camera rarely cutting once things start to get crazy. Unfortunately, watching the film is still about as much fun as getting buried alive.

If its possible for a film to be considered “mental torture porn,” than Funny Games would be the undisputed king of that ring. Although there is violence in the film, most of it occurs off-camera, leaving us to merely view the results. The horrible humiliation and psychological torture that the pair put the family through, however, is almost impossible to watch. During an excruciatingly long scene where the pair force the mother to strip down to her underwear in front of her family, I found myself asking the all-important question, “Why?” Not “Why are the bad guys doing that,” since the world is full of truly sick individuals but “Why are we being forced to watch this in such detail?” Like Pasolini’s Salo, Funny Games is a film that not only shows you the shit on the floor but proceeds to rub your face into it. Haneke doesn’t just want to make you aware of the evil in the world: he wants to make you suffer it, too.

Were Funny Games just a streamlined, brutal, unflinching home-invasion thriller, it would be a memorable film. Haneke, however, has something else up his sleeve. At one point, the lead psycho, Paul, is standing in front of his partner, Peter. He turns and winks directly at the camera, although our understanding is that Peter is there, off-camera. This makes sense, of course, all the way up to the point where Paul turns and directly addresses the audience, asking us if we think the family has been through enough. At once, we’re not just spectators but accomplices: if we didn’t want to see the family suffer so much, we’d quit watching and let them off the hook. No film, especially fringe and extreme films, can exist without an audience. In one fell swoop, Haneke indicts horror and exploitation fans, asking the all-important question: how normal is it to want to witness suffering? As a lifelong horror fan, I didn’t much care to answer it. Thanks, Michael: see you again when I’m feeling slightly too upbeat.

As a remedy for the massive feel-bad vibes presented by Funny Games, I turned to an old master of the feel-good film: the inimitable Steven Spielberg and his recent computer-animated feature, The Adventures of Tintin. I originally avoided the film due to the computer animation (I’m much more of an old-school animation fan) but I figured that only Spielberg could give me the 10ccs of food-times needed to wash away Haneke. Turns out, I was right.

Right off the bat, imagine my immense excitement when, during the fabulous credit sequence, I notice that Peter Jackson is producing the film. Alright…that’s interesting. Not half as interesting, however, as the fact that Joe “Attack the Block” Cornish and Edgar “Cornetto Trilogy” Wright wrote the film. That’s right, boys and girls: two of the best comedic horror/sci-fi writers in the biz collaborated on the script for a Spielberg film produced by Peter Jackson. Essentially, there was no way this would be anything but one big love letter to classical film and it did not disappoint.

Once I actually got into the film, any concerns about the animation style melted away: the animation was actually so realistic that it was easy to imagine this as a life-action film, versus a cartoon. In fact, there are so many visual and narrative nods to the Indiana Jones films that this almost felt like it inhabited the same world. The scene where Snowy pursues TinTin’s kidnappers through a busy street reminds me immediately of the Cairo chase in the first Indiana Jones film, right down to the way in which the pursued item is constantly kept in the same frame as the pursuer, despite their distance from each other: simply genius.

In all honesty, there were too many highlights in the film to count. The battle between Haddock’s ship and the pirate ship is absolutely stunning, perhaps one of the coolest nautical battles I’ve seen. The final duel with construction cranes is amazing and made me wonder why no one ever tried that in the past (hint: probably because it’s impossible). The voice acting, whether from Daniel Craig as the bad guy or Simon Pegg and Nick Frost as the bumbling Scotland Yard duo of Thomson and Thompson, is top-notch and TinTin, Captain Haddock and Snowy make one hell of a team. Massively fun and technologically impressive, I can easily compare The Adventures of TinTin to Wes Anderson’s animated The Fantastic Mr. Fox. Both films showcase outstanding filmmakers boldly going where they (technically) haven’t gone before.

I’m not sure that mere words can do justice to the sheer awfulness that is The Hamiltons but I’ll try. Imagine, if you will, a torture porn version of Party of Five featuring hammier actors than Troll 2 and The Room combined. Intrigued? Let me finish. The family that we’re stuck with for almost 90 minutes features a stereotypical moody, whiny teen boy, complete with always-filming video camera; a straight-laced older brother that holds down a job, is polite, smart and kind, so is obviously a closeted homosexual; a twin brother and sister that chew through scenery like ravenous warthogs when they’re not busy sucking face and disgusting the audience with the most assinine, ridiculous display of incestuous union since whatever Troma film took on the subject; and a supernaturally strong, feral, beast of a kid brother that looks like…a normal kid.

On top of these obnoxious characters we get a story that blatantly rips off We Are What We Are before becoming something else (read: equally shitty) entirely, a primal-scream breakdown that must be seen to be believed and the actual line “I’m getting awful tired of your hullaballoo,” delivered with as much earnestness and integrity as the actor could manage when being asked to deliver something so obviously Shakespearian in origin.

But am I being a little too mean? Isn’t all of this a bit harsh for a film that probably just wants to be considered a decent little horror film? Absolutely not. The pair of idiot filmmakers behind this call themselves The Butcher Brothers and have already created a sequel. They must be stopped by any and all means necessary, before The Hamiltons becomes the truly shitty franchise that it threatens to become. If we do nothing, we may soon wake up in a world where the Butcher Brothers may continue to create unchecked, turning the world into the goofy nightmare land of Branded.

In short: I’m getting awful tired of their hullaballoo.