reviews

Disturbing Behavior (1998)

/ swampflix / 4 Comments

EPSON MFP image

threehalfstar

campstamp

As I watched Disturbing Behavior for the very first time yesterday evening, something about it seemed strangely familiar. It didn’t take long for me to realize that it was quite similar to The Faculty, which was also released in 1998. In The Faculty, high school students are turned into aliens by their extraterrestrial faculty members and in Disturbing Behavior, high school students are turned into robots by their human faculty members. And, of course, each film has “the new kid in town” main character (typical for 90s teen flicks). After reading a couple of articles about the film, many compare it to The Stepford Wives (1975). I’m guessing this is due to the human to robot transformations, but that’s really the only connection I noticed. Despite all of the similarities it has to other films, Disturbing Behavior does a good job of standing out on its own. It’s campy sci-fi horror with a dash of high school drama, and I really enjoyed the film.

Steve Clark (James Marsden) and his family move to the small town of Cradle Bay after the tragic suicide of his older brother. Like all new kids, he immediately connects with a couple of outcasts at his new high school, Rachel Wagner (Katie Holmes) and Gavin Strick (Nick Stahl). As the film progresses, some “disturbing behavior” begins to occur in the group known as the Blue Ribbons, a clique of popular kids decked out in letterman jackets. With the help of a wacky janitor, Steve and Rachel find out the horrific secret behind the Blue Ribbons and attempt to stop their reign of terror.

It’s always great to see Holmes in a “bad girl” role since she’s best known for being the girl next door in Dawson’s Creek. I really enjoyed her in this film because she is great at pulling off the “misunderstood teen” look and attitude, and the chemistry between her and Marsden is pretty damn hot. She starred in the music video for The Flys’ hit single, “Got You (Where I Want You),” and I always assumed she was selected to be in the video because she was a pretty big teen idol during the time it was released. It turns out that the song made its debut on the Disturbing Behavior soundtrack (it plays in the opening scene and during the credits), so that’s probably the reason she was in the video. Mystery solved!

Viewing Disturbing Behavior through a critical lens makes it a horrible viewing experience, and that’s because it’s not a film that should be taken seriously. It’s loads of mindless fun and totally worth a watch or two.

-Britnee Lombas

Invisible Invaders (1959)

/ swampflix / 1 Comment

EPSON MFP image

three star

campstamp

Although it’s a lot more small-scale charming than hilariously inept, the black & white cheapie Invisible Invaders shares a lot with the alien takeover by way of zombie mind control plot of Ed Wood’s trashterpiece Plan 9 From Outer Space, right down to the over-reliance on stock footage and the 1959 release date. An essential difference between the two pictures, however, can be detected in the “Invisible” half of Invisible Invaders’ title. In Ed Wood’s Plan 9, the Earth invaders are sassy, overdressed fops who re-animate lifeless corpses as a Plan B (or “Plan I” really, seeing how far they got down their list of options). In Invisible Invaders, the plot to “inhabit the bodies of dead Earth men” is not only the initial plan, but also a necessary one, as the aliens who invade our planet are invisible alien spirits without physical bodies to call their own (which isn’t too far from the “Thetans” of Scientology).

You see, the titular Invisible Invaders have been around for a long time. A really long time. According to their initial contact in the film they, in fact, conquered & eliminated all life on the Earth’s moon more than 20,000 years ago, converting the natural satellite into their own impregnable space base and have been just kinda . . . chilling there ever since. Makes total sense, but what would prompt these superior, unseeable beings to finally snap out of their moon haze and set their eyes on the main planet? Because the film was produced during the cold war, the answer is, of course, that our rapid development of space travel & atomic weapons alarmed them to the point where they had no choice to intervene.  Their mode of intervention just happened to be raising & weaponizing our dead to work against us.

Even when this story is not being spelled out in detail by the invisible (yet very talkative) space aliens in question, it’s also reinforced by narration that just refuses to quit (or at least fade into the background temporarily). The endless narration is a blessing in disguise, as the film’s continuous use of stock footage & mock headlines would make very little sense without a vocal guiding hand. There’s a lesson at the heart of Invisible Invaders (that is thankfully spelled out for those not paying attention) that there are dangers in “the race for atom supremacy” that could be avoided if the nations of the world decided to stand side by side in a common cause instead of competing for the top spot in global supremacy. That message, however, is a little weak in comparison to the film’s surface, Ed Woodian charms: a body-snatching zombie plot; hilariously disconnected stock footage; very sciencey science labs featuring all kinds of smoking, bubbling liquids; and the kind of adorable practical effects you would expect in a 50s film in which you weren’t allowed to show aliens physically attacking the planet, due to their invisible nature. It’s a lot more likely that a modern audience would find the film entertaining for those cheap, campy thrills than its moralizing about the nuclear arms race, but it’s an adorable film all the same.

-Brandon Ledet

Charles Bradley: Soul of America (2012)

/ swampflix / Leave a comment

EPSON MFP image

threehalfstar

There’s sometimes a punishing redundancy to profile documentaries. If the subject has been in the public light for long enough, a profile doc can often feel like a Wikipedia article in motion, like a flip through a scrapbook of events everyone already remembers. There’s an inherent nostalgia to the format that can make the experience pleasant, but ultimately unnecessary if the life being detailed is already well known to the audience. Soul of America, a profile of soul singer Charles Bradley, sidesteps this problem by tackling a subject that has never had his story told on a large scale before. Bradley is in a unique position as a subject in that he struggled to make it in the music business for 42 years before finally recording his debut album, an instant classic titled No Time for Dreaming. Soul of America follows Bradley for the 50 days preceding that album’s release, allowing him to reflect on his troubled past and muse about the promise of his future. Charles Bradley’s life makes for an interesting profile in that he has a long, storied past that’s still fresh to his audience, as it’s only ever been told to them through his songs.

A black soul singer in his early 60s, Charles Bradley is as unlikely of a debut recording artist as any. His eventual success story is remarkable just based on his age alone, but Soul of America makes it out to be even more of an anomaly by providing the details of where he’s been hiding for those 60 years. Bradley had already been performing live music sets before he recorded No Time for Dreaming, but he wasn’t performing original songs. As an impeccable James Brown impersonator performing under the name Black Velvet, Brown had earned the moniker “James Brown Jr.” Although his work as an impersonator was respected for its authenticity, it was a far from glamorous life, as is revealed through scenes touring the home Bradley shares with his aging mother in a cramped housing project, his anecdotes about riding subways to keep warm, and a visit from his tutor, who reveals that he is operating on a 1st grade reading level. As dire as that situation sounds, Bradley is infectiously optimistic about his future and there’s a general sense that things are gradually getting better. His goal through his reading lessons is to be able to write down his own lyrics (instead of relying on the help of his young musician collaborators) and although he is the baby of his family who seemingly loves his mother dearly, his childhood stories make it sound like he takes better care of her now than she did with him in the past. There’s an incredible perseverance at the core of Charles Bradley’s story that makes it all the more satisfying to watch him succeed.

Although Charles Bradley’s perseverance and dedication to his craft despite the shitty, shitty odds is a large part of what makes his story so fascinating, it’s his incredibly emotive personality that shines brightest both in Soul of America and in his studio recordings. There’s an arresting sincerity to the man that you can read on his face just as well as in his voice. Whether he’s meekly asking for Sharon Jones’ autograph, getting giddy over seeing his picture in the New York Post, choking up over how much he loves everyone in the world, or struggling to tell the story of his closest brother’s murder, Bradley is a rawly emotive man. As one of his collaborators puts it, “He wants to reach every single person in the audience” and he has a uniquely genuine quality to his personality that allows him to do just that.

The soul music powerhouse Daptone Records have found a real gem in Charles Bradley both as a talented vocalist & songwriter and as an admirable human being who would have every right to be bitter & distraught, but somehow chose another path. The documentary Soul of America is a great introduction to his story & his personality, but there’s really no substitute to listening to his just as genuine records & live performances. There’s an inspiringly honest sense of hope surrounding Charles Bradley that makes him a worthwhile subject in any format, but the power of his music is what makes him truly special.

-Brandon Ledet

Big Eyes (2014)

/ swampflix / 2 Comments

EPSON MFP image

threehalfstar

It’s tempting, but not exactly accurate to think of Big Eyes as a return to form for Tim Burton. Although it recalls the vibrant cartoon suburbia of classic titles like Edward Scissorhands, Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, and Beetlejuice and the biopic format of the masterful Ed Wood, it’s not quite like anything Burton’s ever made before. In some ways Big Eyes is a by-the-numbers biopic of kitsch painter Margaret Keane, elevated only by performances by always-welcome names like Amy Adams, Krysten Ritter, Jason Schwartzman, and Christoph Waltz. The most interesting play with form here is the way Waltz’s controlling husband steals the movie from its subject the same way his real-life counterpart stole the limelight & credit for her life’s work, kitschy paintings of depressed children with oversized eyes. For the most part, however, Big Eyes is a straightforward genre exercise, low-key in its scope & ambitions. At this point of Burton’s career, though, a low-key genre exercise is a welcome change from the long string of CGI remakes he’s been releasing since the early 2000s. It’s the most fun, relaxed, and memorable film he’s made in years, even if it bears little resemblance to the cartoon goth aesthetic of his 80s & 90s heyday.

That’s not to say that the film is devoid of Burton’s traditional modes of comical horror; it’s just that the horror takes on a much different form. In this case, Waltz’s sleazebag showman plagiarist (who takes a very Warholian approach to art as commerce) is the threat that plagues the film’s characters. Amy Adams’ Margaret Keane begins the film by leaving one abusive relationship and slipping immediately into another, with Waltz’s crazed pathological liar husband sucking up all of the life & freedom she barely had left over from her first marriage. As she explains it, “I’ve never acted freely. I was a daughter and then a wife and then a mother.” Even as a painter she’s treated as a subordinate, her personal expressions converted into commerce by an abusive, manipulative man. The creepy thing is that he’s so sleazily charming even while he’s ruining her life. Waltz is hilarious, hamming it up as much as he’s allowed, chewing scenery like a hungry dog who’s food’s about to get taken away. His performance is an impressive balance between funny & creepy and before you know it he’s forced Adams’s Keane to take a backseat to her own story the same way the true life plagiarist sidelined his kitsch artist wife. He’s not a headless horseman or a bloodthirsty Martian or a fabricated man with scissors for hands, but he most certainly is a monster.

I spent a lot of Big Eyes’ run time trying to figure out exactly what inspired Burton to tell this story. There are aspects of art as show business, the uselessness of critics, and the redundancy of an artist endlessly repeating themselves that could invite comparisons to Burton’s own work as a filmmaker, but none with too concrete of a conclusion. Maybe he was drawn to telling a story about how it sucked to be a woman in the 50s or he’s just a huge Margaret Keane fan and wanted to tell her story (which is quite interesting). Whatever the reason, it’s a welcome change of pace from Burton’s recent output and his catalog could benefit from more low-key, straightforward works like it. I’m not sure Waltz needs to be set free to ham it up more often, but it works here and the rest of the cast offer a good, calm counterbalance to his eccentricities. For now, it was great to see him steal some spotlight and for Burton’s aesthetic to receive some much-needed sunshine & relaxation.

-Brandon Ledet

Buzzard (2015)

/ swampflix / 5 Comments

EPSON MFP image

three star

Slacker culture is surely alive & well in 2015, but there was something unavoidably ubiquitous about 90s MTV slacker culture. Pretty much the definition of a low-stakes drama, Buzzard feels oddly old-fashioned in its portrayal of an apathetic underachiever, Marty, who feels like a cultural relic from a bygone lackadaisical era. Cheaply filmed and intentionally flat in style, Buzzard seemingly cares as little as Marty does, echoing his “It doesn’t matter” mantra with every fiber of its being. Buzzard portrays a world of petty victories & major losses where the odds are stacked so highly against Marty that he really has no incentive to try or care about anything and the movie itself has its own apathetic crisis in the same vein.

An angry, depressed loser with a go-nowhere job as a temp for a bank, Marty’s petty victories involve eating junk food, listening to metal, jumping on his bed, watching pornos while wearing a Halloween mask, and scamming suckers for small increments of cash. His half-assed scams typically pay off as long as the person on the other end cares as little about the transactions as he does. The problems that Marty faces only get rolling once the people he’s scamming start to care & take notice of his chump-change crimes. Marty amps up the damages of his mistakes as well when his most significant petty victory of all comes to fruition: a homemade Freddy Krueger glove that gives his “nothing matters” attitude some real-life consequences.

If Buzzard was intentionally looking to cultivate the 90s MTV slacker aesthetic it was astute in including outdated cultural markers like Nintendo NES, CD towers, and Freddy Krueger posters & merchandise. Although its ambitions & style feel like little more than a vintage throwback, its themes exploring the isolation of poverty, corporate culture, and poor mental health still resonate. Although it’s unlikely that Marty will ever approach anything that resembles a “successful” life, it’s still satisfying to watch him achieve short-term goals like the construction of his Krueger glove or eating a massive plate of spaghetti in a luxury hotel room. Due to Marty’s (and Buzzard’s) lack of motivation, regard, or enthusiasm for anything, it’s hard to celebrate too much of his life other than with surface-level observations like “Cool Demons t-shirt, dude,” but in a world where he has very little room to achieve much of anything, that line of shallow praise has considerable amount of significance.

-Brandon Ledet

Escape from Tomorrow (2013)

/ swampflix / 1 Comment

EPSON MFP image

threehalfstar

campstamp

The tale of Escape from Tomorrow’s production is much more infamous than anything within the film itself. As the story goes, writer/director Randy Moore was hammering out some daddy issues he associates with the Disney World theme park in Orlando, Florida by staging a guerilla film shoot within the park. Filmed without Walt Disney’s permission, Escape from Tomorrow follows a family of tourists around the park, including shots staged in the resort hotel rooms, restaurants, and the amusement park rides themselves. Promising to turn the fantasy land into a live-action nightmare, the film has essentially been reduced to an anecdote about its production, without a whole lot being said about its actual quality. I went in expecting a dark, twisted sci-fi slow-burner that milks the park’s artificiality for an unnerving effect, but what was actually delivered was much more playful & amusing.

Backing up the director’s claim that he made the film as an exploration of his relationship with his father, Escape from Tomorrow’s protagonist is a hapless, lecherous doof of a man who drags his miserable family through Disney World as a means to forget his troubled employment status & loveless marriage. The characters sport the subtlety & nuance of an 80s sitcom family here. The kids are more or less whiny brats. The mother is a humorless shrew. The father is slack-jawed lecher that gets obnoxiously drunk & openly ogles giggling teen girls in the park in plain view of a wife he openly despises. As I’m sure happens often in that Florida sunshine, this group of Disney World tourists is having a full familial meltdown, even without the more sinister aspects of the plot & imagery coming into play.

The acting leaves a lot to be desired in Escape from Tomorrow (I desperately wish the idiot dad were played by Rob Huebel or Ken Marino), but there’s a sense of purpose to the family’s phony, exaggerated mannerisms. The whole film just feels playfully & intentionally . . . off. There are CGI decapitations, a pious reverence to the Epcot dome as a religious symbol, intentionally crude green screen shots that counteract the documentary feel, real life evil Disney queens (sex-crazed, of course), and a persistently cheesy Old Hollywood score that underlines the intense artificiality of the whole affair. It’s not a subtle film. It is, however, a delightfully goofy & irreverent one.

Anyone looking for a deep, prodding indictment of the nuclear, American family unit or a super creepy sci-fi freakout are likely to be disappointed by Escape from Tomorrow‘s who cares/nothing matters tone. The film succeeds in its quest to compose a film almost entirely from shots “stolen” from within Disney World (although the word “Disney” is bleeped out for legal reasons), but much like with all merchandise shoplifted from within those gates, the narrative it runs away with is frighteningly empty, like well-crafted kitsch. Much like with a lot of Disney products, it looks great & has an interesting backstory, but it’s a lot more satisfying as an eccentrically goofy trifle than a work of “serious” art.

-Brandon Ledet

Predestination (2015)

/ swampflix / 7 Comments

EPSON MFP image

fourstar

There has been a recent push to update the sci-fi genre in varied, interesting ways. While there have certainly been a few throwbacks to the traditional rocket ships & gunfire Flash Gordon adventure epics like Guardians of the Galaxy & Edge of Tomorrow, titles like Upstream Color, Under the Skin, Coherence, The Congress, and Beyond the Black Rainbow are searching for new territory for the genre to mine. They’re all unique works that can hardly be compared to one another individually, but as a group they feel like a refreshing revitalization of a genre that can sometimes get trapped within its own tropes & clichés. No matter how much I love these movies and what they’re attempting to accomplish, however, there’s just no denying the inherent draw of the sci-fi aesthetic of yesteryear. My favorite film from last year was Interstellar, not because it carved out new sci-fi territory, but because it felt authentic to old school sci-fi pulp you could read serialized in special interest quarterlies or hear in long gone radio plays. There’s a draw to this old fashioned sci-fi aesthetic that I’m glad to see hasn’t been left by the wayside in the wake of our recent crop of experimental exercises in the genre.

With its muted noir tone & a setting that spans from the 1950s through the 70s, Predestination firmly plants itself within this brand of sci-fi throwbacks. Based off of a 1959 Robert Heinlein short story titled “All You Zombies” (which was first published in an issue Fantasy and Science Fiction magazine, the exact type of old school serials I’m describing), the film has an authentically old fashioned take on sci-fi as a genre. It is undeniably cheap & trashy in the way its twists & turns are revealed to the audience (some of those reveals are not nearly as surprising as the movie seems to think they are) but that potential flaw is severely undercut by its straightforward style of storytelling. On paper the movie’s plot about time travel, secretive government agencies, and self-fulfilling paradoxes wouldn’t add up to much of value, but the way the story is framed as a drunken, embittered bar patron spinning a yarn for the barkeep is a perfect, no-nonsense approach to material that is nothing but nonsense.

There are some typical sci-fi adventure aspects to Predestination, like virtual reality helmets, “time jumps”, and young girls recruited to be male astronauts’ “companions” (an idea that reminded me of the similarly pulpy Journey to the Seventh Planet), but they’re counteracted with more concrete, noir-influenced images like trench coats, smoke-filled bars, homemade bombs, and a fedora on fire. Just as the always-tricky time travel aspect of the story starts to get overwhelmingly intricate, it also boils down to a typical action movie plot of trying to prevent a bomb from going off and catching the bad guy before he gets away. Even the story’s peculiar play with gender identity, which you would expect to mark it as a modern work, feels old fashioned & outlandish as it’s dealt with here, but straightforward performances from the two leads Ethan Hawke & Sarah Snook anchor that aspect well, just like the barroom storytelling framing device anchors the movie’s outlandish plot.

Predestination is neither a wholly unique work nor an exercise in good taste. It is, however, an example of the virtue of sincere, traditional acting & storytelling and how those elements can elevate ludicrous material into something special. Although its major twists & reveals may occasionally be telegraphed, it’s fascinating to watch the film reach those conclusions in its own time and on its own terms. There’s a sci-fi tradition to its sincere pulp sense of tonal balance, but it’s a vintage tradition that’s unconcerned with the new territory the genre’s been exploring in recent years. I appreciate the movie the way that any audience can appreciate a great storyteller, especially a rapt audience in a late night barroom who has nothing better to do than listen to a good yarn that becomes increasingly more outlandish as it stretches on.

-Brandon Ledet

Beyond the Black Rainbow (2012)

/ swampflix / 20 Comments

EPSON MFP image

fivestar

In its opening minutes Beyond the Black Rainbow prepares its audience for its slow motion, abstract tone with phrases like “a state of mind”, “a way of being”, “a practical application of an abstract ideal”, and “the dawning of a new era in the human race and the human soul.” Beyond the Black Rainbow is not a straightforward cinematic experience, but instead works more like ambient music or a poem. In an age where the lines dividing cinema & television are becoming increasingly blurred, there’s an exponential value in movies that work this way. Recent mind-benders like Beyond the Black Rainbow, It Follows, Upstream Color, Under the Skin, and The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears are much-needed reminders that there are still things cinema can do that television can’t, no matter how much HBO wants you to believe otherwise.

That’s not to say that Beyond the Black Rainbow is an entirely new, unfamiliar experience. Its 1983 setting intentionally recalls vintage psychedelic sci-fi titles like Zardoz & Phase IV that turned a hangover from optimistic hippie mysticism into something much more sinister. Instead of apathetic dystopias & mutated killer ants, however, it mines its horrors from new age psychiatry, or what it calls “therapeutic technologies”. Although it’s set thirty years in the past, Beyond the Black Rainbow occupies a decidedly futuristic hellscape made up of telekinesis, television static, clouds of smoke, melting walls, and intense hues of red & blue. It packs the same unnerving punch of a traditional horror movie experience, but that effect is distilled in a futuristic void. This becomes increasingly apparent as the movie’s killer, an . . . unorthodox psychiatrist named Dr. Nile, behaves more & more like a traditional horror movie villain until he reaches full Jason Voorhees status late in the film.

The slow, methodical pace of Beyond the Black Rainbow is not going to win over everyone in the audience, but for those who aren’t in a particular rush for the plot to be pushed along are sure to be wowed by its plethora of mind-bending, often horrifying images. It is a decidedly cinematic experience, one that depends greatly on the strengths of its potent sounds & images instead of more traditional markers like plot & dialogue that carry less hallucinatory films. It’s impossible to imagine Beyond the Black Rainbow working in the television format and there’s an increasingly valuable virtue in that aspect of its design. Go into the film with an open mind & diligent patience and you may find the experience to be therapeutic, especially in a time where some people claim that television has surpassed cinema as a superior visual art form.

-Brandon Ledet

Journey to the Seventh Planet (1962)

/ swampflix / 1 Comment

EPSON MFP image

fourstar

campstamp

Did you know that in the year 2001 we conquered long-distance space travel, achieved nuclear disarmament, and handed over the entire world’s sovereignty to the United Nations? Me neither, but I was really into shitty rap-rock & sneaking even shittier beers at the time so I might’ve been too distracted to notice. Needless derision aside, you really do have to admire the optimism of Journey to the Seventh Planet’s version of 2001. Years before the moon landing, the end of the Cold War, and, hell, even JFK’s assassination, the film felt like the world had its whole life ahead of it. Journey supposed that by 2001 we’d have a good enough handle on space travel to make it all the way to Uranus (sadly not pronounced the fun way here), but instead by that time we’d never made it past the moon and a lot of people were listening to Limp Bizkit.

Journey to the Seventh Planet did get one thing right, though: the universal appeal of 60s era pin-up girls never truly faded. The film tells the story of a small, all-male (of course) rocketship crew who journeys to Uranus (teehee teehee) and discovers that it looks an awful lot like California wilderness. This similarity is not only a frugal cost-saving measure, but rather part of a super cool plot device in which a nefarious alien spirit hypnotizes the rocket crew and brings their subconscious visions to life. During the atomic age opening monologue about the end of the arms race and the world-governing UN, a narrator warns “There are no limits to the imagination and man’s ability to make reality out of his visions is his greatest strength.” Apparently this extends to the visual re-creation of California forest & breathable air, but that’s not all. As the crew is composed entirely of lonely, horny, red-blooded space travelers, their hallucinations begin to take the form of voluptuous pin-up models who lure them away from safety one at a time so the alien spirit can try to hitch a ride back to Earth in their stupid, horny bodies. It’s pretty damn adorable.

The pin-up models and a forest covered Uranus are the most unique aspects of Journey to the Seventh Planet, but they’re far from the movie’s only charms. There’s also a plethora of adorable atomic age sci-fi staples like model rocketships, dinky rayguns, science babble about “atomic units” & “retrorockets”, and strange green lights that give the film a less-artsy Planet of the Vampires feel once the illusion is broken. The hypnotized men also conjure up images of stock footage “giant” spiders and stop-motion Harryhausen-esque cyclops lizard monsters that are legitimately pretty awesome. There is no shortage of cool ideas and goofy practical effects in Journey to the Seventh Planet and I much prefer its space alien pin-up version of 2001 to the much more depressing Limp Bizkit reality. I honestly believe that if it had chosen the much more memorable title Journey to Uranus it would have a much larger cult following, if not only for the juvenile giggling it would be sure to induce.

-Brandon Ledet

Tusk (2014)

/ swampflix / 4 Comments

EPSON MFP image

onehalfstar

campstamp

Somewhere at the heart of indie staple Kevin Smith’s horror debut Tusk lies a scathing takedown of toxic hipster irony the likes of which I haven’t seen since the Tim Heidecker’s starring role in The Comedy. The problem is that the film itself is just as self-indulgent & grotesquely ironic as the subject it’s supposedly lampooning. Tusk succeeds to gross-out viewers on almost a Human Centipede level of depravity in some of its bodily horror, but those moments are isolated images in a largely masturbatory genre exercise that was conceived in a conversation during an art form best known for encouraging masturbatory exercises: the podcast.

Tusk was conceived during Kevin Smith’s podcast and the film is framed in that same context, beginning with the sounds of self-indulgent laughter & aimless conversation that often sinks the likeability of the art form. The host of the program is a fatally ironic Justin Long (along with his sidekick, a disturbingly adult Haley Joel Osment), who plays the toxic hipster persona right down to the bushy walrus mustache. That mustache is an effective bit of foreshadowing, of course, because Long’s character is rewarded for his cruel radio program’s “cringe humor attack shit” (he’s like an effete Howard Stern) when he is abducted by a serial killer who intends to turn him into a humanoid walrus. Once abducted, Long is punished for his podcast’s crimes against humanity by being offered this ultimatum: “If you wish to continue living, you’ll be a walrus or you’ll be nothing at all.”

The movie’s sole effecting element is the walrus transformation, which is alternately horrifying & silly. It’s a grotesque display for sure, but despite the narrative bending over backwards to explain why a serial killer would want a human walrus named “Mr. Tusk” for a companion, it feels overwhelmingly pointless. Once Long’s walrus man apologizes for his crimes against decency in the line, “I’m sorry I’m such an asshole,” there seems to be no point for the film to continue. But, continue it does. There are long stretches of who-cares dialogue about war stories & police investigations that feel like listening to a particularly self-indulgent podcast on a subject you have no interest in. Tusk’s central conceit and bizarrely specific mode of punishment is interesting, but amounts to exactly one memorable scene: a climactic walrus fight set to Fleetwood Mac’s “Tusk”. That fight is the only genuinely entertaining moment in a film prone to committing the very sins of irony, cruelty, and narcissism that it supposedly abhors. On the whole, Tusk wasn’t nearly as empty or as unwatchable as I had expected (though the monotonous police investigation sublot certainly pushed it), but it was hardly worthwhile for that two minute payoff either.

-Brandon Ledet