8/16/15 (Part One): A Little Stake, A Lotta Whine

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Alex Karpovsky, Anna Margaret Hollyman, awkward films, bad boyfriends, cinema, commitment issues, Dakota Goldhor, dark comedies, Dustin Guy Defa, film reviews, filmed in New York, films, hipsters, horror-comedies, independent films, indie films, indie horror film, Jason Banker, Jason Selvig, Jerry Raik, Juliette Fairley, Max Heller, Melodie Sisk, Movies, obnoxious people, Onur Tukel, rom-com, romances, set in New York City, sex comedies, Summer of Blood, unlikable protagonist, vampires, Vanna Pilgrim, Woody Allen, writer-director-actor-editor

On paper, multi-hypenate filmmaker (he writes, directs, produces, edits and stars) Onur Tukel’s Summer of Blood (2014) seems like a pretty winning idea: take the neurotic, relationship-based comedies of Woody Allen but insert a vampire protagonist. Et voila: instant horror-comedy goodness! There’s obviously a rich vein to be mined here: imagine one of Allen’s schlubby, lovable losers trying to navigate the choppy waters of not only a terrifying dating scene but also their newly acquired vampirism. If you think about it, the comedy almost writes itself.

In practice, however, Tukel’s Summer of Blood is actually quite a pain in the ass (or neck, if you prefer the punny version). This has less to do with the oftentimes awkward, amateurish performances from some of the cast than it does with the film’s one towering problem: not only is Tukel’s Erik a thoroughly obnoxious, odious jerk, he’s also a massively unlikable, irritating protagonist. As portrayed by S.O.B.’s resident auteur, Erik is a tone-deaf, ridiculously self-obsessed hipster nitwit, a constantly schticking human hemorrhoid who’s never funny, sympathetic or, for the most part, remotely interesting. While the film that surrounds him has its own issues, Tukel’s Erik is the super-massive black hole at the center that sucks the good stuff right into oblivion.

We first meet our hapless “hero” as he and long-suffering girlfriend, Jody (Anna Margaret Hollyman, much better than the film requires), are having one of their customarily awkward dinners at their favorite outdoor restaurant. Jody proposes to her schlubby, commitment-phobic beau only to be summarily rejected: not only is it “cliche” to propose at a restaurant, it’s too “post-feminist” for the woman to propose. Since this little routine has been going on for some time, Jody finally gets fed up and ends up leaving with an old friend, Jason (Jason Selvig). On their way out, Jason offers some pretty valuable advice: “Shave, button up your shirt and get a fucking job.” Well played, Jason…well played.

Turns out that Jason does have a job, although he applies himself as little as humanly possible. He works in an office of some kind where his one and only friend, Jamie (Alex Karpovsky, who’s always a breath of fresh air) tries to keep him on the right side of the boss, Carl (Max Heller). For the most part, Erik just uses his time in the office to hit on comely co-worker, Penelope (Dakota Goldhor, turning in a truly baffling performance). When she spurns his advances due to his age and “not being her type,” Erik swipes a photo from her desk and proceeds to jack off in the bathroom. If you thought romance was dead, you’d better think again, pardner.

After Jody breaks up with him, Erik goes on a trio of awkward, mostly unsuccessful blind dates (all at the same restaurant, natch), two of which end with him getting summarily rejected after saying some truly stupid things. He does manages to seal the deal with one young lady, however, although the thoroughly unspectacular sex (in the most bored way possible, she keeps imploring Erik to go “deeper,” “harder” and “faster,” none of which he’s capable of doing). She only does “great sex,” however, so our hero gets the heave-ho here, as well.

While wandering the streets of his hip, New York neighborhood (Bushwick, natch) one night, Erik happens to bump into the mysterious, debonair Gavin (Dustin Guy Defa). After another awkward, schtick-filled encounter, Gavin bites Erik on the neck, turning him into a child of the night. Rather than be overly concerned, however, Erik is actually kinda over-joyed: he feels great, he’s more confident, can hypnotize his stereotypical Jewish landlord into letting him stay for free and, most importantly, can now fuck like some kind of Roman god. Using his new “powers,” Erik returns to each of his previous “strike-outs” and proceeds to knock their socks off…and turn them into vampires, of course.

As Erik adjusts to his new lifestyle, a lifestyle that includes vampire threesomes, feasting on stoners in the park and being an even bigger jerk at work, he finds himself constantly nagged by one little issue: turns out he really, really misses Jody. In fact, he might actually be in love with her, after all. With only Jason standing between him and presumed happiness, Erik must use all of his vamp skills to try to win Jody back. Can a vampire ever find true love? Only in New York, baby…only in New York.

For the most part, Summer of Blood is a pretty typical, low-budget horror comedy: the film looks okay (the frequent blood-letting is well-done), the camera-work is decent (cinematographer Jason Banker is actually the writer/director behind Toad Road (2012), one of the very best, most ingenious films I’ve seen in the last several years, although his work on S.O.B. certainly isn’t revelatory) and the actual storyline is kind of intriguing. The acting ranges from pretty good (Hollyman and Karpovsky are definitely the best of this bunch) to much less impressive (Goldhor brings such a weird energy to Penelope that I could never figure out if she was disgusted by Erik’s frequent advances or actually flirting with him and the two hipsters that Erik runs into are the very definition of non-actors), with most performances falling in the “decent” spectrum.

As mentioned earlier, the single biggest, critical issue with Summer of Blood ends up being our protagonist, Erik: to put it bluntly, any scene he’s in is a chore to sit through, which becomes a bit of an issue when he’s in every single scene. Erik is never anything more than an intolerable shitheels, a whining, obnoxious jerk who’s endless self-awareness and constant schtick gets old by the three-minute mark and then just keeps going and going, like some kind of Hell-spawned Energizer Bunny.

In any given scene, at any given moment, Tukel’s verbal diarrhea is so overwhelming that it’s impossible to ever focus on the content of any particular scene or moment. He finds a guy dying in the street from a slashed throat, he does a stand-up routine. He runs into a couple of hipsters, he riffs on how he looks like Jerry Garcia. He has an orgy with his three vampire ladies, we get schtick about how he’s not a misogynist because he genuinely likes having sex with multiple women at the same time. To make it classier, however, he lets one of the vamps read from Ginsberg’s “Howl.”

The entire film becomes one massive, never-ending bit of (largely unfunny) schtick, some of it so moldy that it’s practically vaudevillian. It’s pretty obvious that Tukel modeled the film after Woody Allen’s oeuvre and, as stated earlier, there’s nothing wrong with that idea whatsoever. There’s no denying that Woody can be a bit of a “schtick-up” guy, himself: he’s also pretty well-known for portraying the kinds of neurotic asses that most people wouldn’t willingly associate with in the real world. For all that, however, Allen is still able to make his characters at least somewhat likable: he’s a schlub but he’s our schlub, dammit.

The problem with Tukel’s performance is that Erik begins the film as an off-putting creep and finishes that way: there’s no arc, no “dark night of the soul,” no sort of internal change, no notion that anything that transpires has any sort of effect on him whatsoever. Oh, sure, he talks about how he’s a “changed” man at the end but the revelation is immediately given the raspberry by the film’s ridiculously flippant final moment. I’m not sure if Tukel actually meant Erik to come across as a lovably shaggy rogue or if he actually meant to portray him as a hatefully obnoxious dickhead: whatever the intent, the end result is a character that wears out his welcome in three minutes and then sticks around for another 83. Talk about the guest from hell!

The real disappointment with Summer of Blood is that the film isn’t devoid of good ideas. In fact, the ultimate observation about vampirism and commitment issues (Erik doesn’t want to turn Jody into a vampire because then he’d be “stuck” with her for all of eternity, rather than just her lifetime) is a really sharp one and could have been spun into something much more thought-provoking, even within the context of a silly sex comedy. There are moments during the film, such as the great scene where a dejected Erik tries to “comfort” strangers on the subway, that are genuinely funny: the key here, for the most part, is that they’re the ones where Tukel gives his motormouth a rest and just lets his filmmaking do the talking.

I didn’t hate Summer of Blood, although I won’t lie and say that I particularly liked it, either: I’ve seen plenty of worst films, both micro and mega-budget. For the most part, the constant, unfunny schtick just wore me down, like being trapped with an incredibly tedious observational comic in a stuck elevator. I still think that the idea of mashing together Woody Allenesque comedy and vampires is a good one, even if Summer of Blood makes it seem as natural as mixing oil and water. No need to wear your garlic necklaces for this one, folks: Onur Tukel’s Summer of Blood is all schtick, no bite.

1/14/14: The Hell Inside You

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Cannibal Holocaust, cinema, cinema verite, drug abuse, experimental film, Film, found-footage, gone before their time, Hallucinogens, horror films, James Davidson, Jason Banker, Movies, psychadelics, Sara Anne Jones, the Seven Gates of Hell, Toad Road, tragedies, twenty-something angst

Full disclosure: I am a firm believer in the strange, the unexplained and the supernatural. Personal experience notwithstanding, this world we inhabit is just too big, too impossible, to not contain more secrets than we could ever imagine. Until we’ve truly poked under every rock, swam to the bottom of every sea and followed every deserted dirt trail to its terminus, we cannot, honestly, say that we know anything about the world we inhabit. We can make educated guesses…we can analyze and test until the cows come home…but at the end of the day…we’re never going to be 100% sure of anything. We must simply have faith that what we believe to be true is so…until something comes along to shatter that believe, of course.

I begin my discussion of Toad Road in this way for a very particular reason: more than almost any film I’ve ever seen (certainly on the short list), this film explodes any notion audiences might have of cinematic reality/unreality, establishing not only a world where anything and everything can be possible but a film where anything can be possible. I’ll be honest: with very few exceptions, I had an almost impossible time telling the fiction from the reality in Toad Road. This, friends and neighbors, is the living definition of a nightmare.

The genius of the film – and the film is genius, make no bones about it – lies in the ease with which we (the audience) continually have the rug pulled from beneath our feet. The story, itself, is pure simplicity: a group of disaffected twenty-something layabouts do massive quantities of every drug imaginable, have sex where they feel like it and generally thumb their nose at society. Into this toxic mix pours the town’s goodie-goodie new girl, Sara. Sara hooks up with James, one of the defacto leaders of the clique and proceeds to throw herself wholehearted into their druggie lifestyle. Sara becomes obsessed with stories about Toad Road, a local urban legend that posits that the Seven Gates to Hell are located in the nearby woods. Ultimately, she convinces James to accompany her as she drops a massive quantity of acid and walks Toad Road. As can be expected, things do not go as planned and James learns the very valuable lesson that Hell can be wherever you are.

As I mentioned, pure simplicity and certainly nothing that we haven’t seen before, especially since the film is occasionally shot in a hand-held, found-footage style. The acting is very naturalistic: these all seem like the kind of wastoids we’ve known (and possibly been in the past) and the tone of cheerful hedonism seems completely honest. These early drug/party scenes have an almost verite style to them, recalling the similar grittiness of Larry Clark’s Kids. Again, nothing we haven’t seen before but well done. And then the rug gets pulled from beneath our feet because…

…this is all really happening. That’s right: the drug/party/debauchery stuff looks so real because it’s actually happening. Take a look at the cast list: most of the characters (with the exception of the odd police officer here or anonymous driver there) have the same name as the actors portraying them. Sara is played by Sara Anne Jones; James is played by James Davidson. The character of Uncle Damon in the film? Played by Damon Johansen.

You see, writer/director Jason Banker didn’t audition his actors: he found them online. In a coup rarely seen (the last time I can remember something like this was Cannibal Holocaust, waaay back in the day), Banker blends the real debauchery of the drugging/partying (smoking massive quantities of weed; doing shrooms; getting so drunk that they all run around their apartment pantless, setting each other’s pubic hair on fire) with the manufactured drama of the story itself. The effect on your psyche is pretty stunning: once you realize that part of the film is actually happening, why not allow for the rest of the story to be taking place? Where does reality end and fiction begin?

I’ll be honest: once I realized what the film was doing, I felt like someone had punched me in the gut. In this day and age, films (especially horror films) are way too safe. Gone are the days of danger when you feared that watching Salo or Cannibal Holocaust or Faces of Death would somehow scar you, change you for the worst into some sort of slobbering beast…the Video Nasties era. No matter how well made modern films are, they just don’t possess that sustained sense of dread because modern times are so much different: we’ve seen and done it all, by this point, and modern technology keeps giving us the ability to do even more. Gone are the days of yore when audiences thought the speeding train would careen through the screen and into the theater: we’ve seen Peter Jackson’s Middle Earth, so we know that absolutely anything can be done.

Here’s the trick: once you realize that the partying scenes are real, it makes you question everything else about the film. How much of this was improvised? Written? Were any of the “friends” actually actors (the lead, Sara, was definitely not a professional, despite her amazing performance)? The film deals with pain on many different levels, particularly with the character of Sara: how much of that was real? The climax of the film pulls a few tricks out, here and there, that serve to remind us that at least some of the film is faked (by my count, there were two shots that satisfied the current obsession with “scary faces” in modern horror films but these were brief and altogether unobtrusive) but so much of the movie revolves around the interactions of the group of friends (at least 80%) that it starts to make you wonder about everything. I know that the end was fake because it’s a movie. But what if…

Lest it seem like the only reason to watch Toad Road is for the dizzying combination of truth and lie, let me set your mind at ease: the film is absolutely stunning in every possible way. When the footage is not hand-held, the cinematography is absolutely gorgeous, particularly all of the beautiful snow and winter footage. The sound design is amazing, especially in the scene where they visit a local cave: the sound of wind chimes begins to get louder and louder on the soundtrack until it’s an all-encompassing force, coming from nowhere and yet going everywhere. And that acting…wow…that acting.

Special attention must be paid to the film’s lead and emotional/moral core, Sara. If there is an arc to the story (and there certainly is), it would be Sara’s journey from good girl to lost soul. Her obsession with Toad Road and psychedelics turns her into a completely different character by the film’s end, one stronger and, yet, more vulnerable than she began. There is a moment in the film where Sara explains what each of the Seven Gates of Hell symbolizes and I’ll be honest: I was completely transfixed. The scene could have gone on for 30 seconds or 30 minutes: it was all the same to me. I simply couldn’t take my eyes from the screen, lest I miss one single thing that she said.

And here, of course, is one of the biggest kickers, the fact that proves how truly haunted Toad Road really is: Sara Anne Jones is now dead. She died of a drug overdose shortly after the film was finished, further blurring the line between reality and fantasy: the character of Sara took her journey to its natural conclusion and, so too, would it seem the actual Sara did the same thing.

It’s a tragic epilogue to a brutally sad film, a movie that makes Requiem for a Dream look like a Calgon commercial. The film is brutal and heartbreaking and absolutely brilliant. There are moments that will make you question not only the world around you but the world inside you, as well. These are lost souls, burned-out candle stubs. By the time that James realizes how much of a waste his life is, by the time that he realizes how desperately he and Sara need to get away, it’s already too late.

The actual meaning behind Toad Road may be a little gauzy but I’m pretty sure I got it, anyway: this is one of the single, greatest anti-drug films in the history of cinema. This is a film for anyone who’s ever been there, anyone who ever got out and anyone who’s ever lost someone who couldn’t. It’s a powerful film, one that I won’t forget anytime soon. Aside from the beautiful cinematography, there’s nothing pretty or sweet about this film. The best way that I can sum the whole thing up is to quote that paragon of optimism, Friedrich Nietzsche:

“Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”

Toad Road was the abyss and it looked right through me.