Wallace hosts a podcast that showcases and humiliates viral videos and what we might call "epic fails". He and his partner Teddy learn of one particularly famous one in Canada, and he goes to interview the guy. Upon arriving and learning of his suicide, Wallace seeks out a place to stay for the night and collect a new story. Traveling to a remote location, he finds a reclusive old seaman named Howard Howe, who promises to tell him stories. Howard, though, drugs and incapacitates Wallace and reveals his intent to dehumanize and torture him. Teddy and Wallace's girlfriend Ally (yes, she is in a relationship with both young men) go looking for him, and do indeed find him with the help of eccentric detective Guy LaPointe.
I hated this movie. Hated it. Hated the characters, hated the special effects. hated the script. Hated most of the running time, hated the flashbacks, hated the direction. I hated the confused, ambiguous correlation between child abuse and misanthropy in Howard, whose identity as a Duplessis orphan supposedly dictates his activities as a serial killer. I hated his grotesque secondary motive for mutilating the bodies he abducts: Once, while at sea, he was rescued by a walrus that he eventually named Mr. Tusk before eating him to survive. Now he seeks to re-create Mr. Tusk so that it may have a fighting chance at life again. To that end, he tortures and dismembers his victims to physically make them into walruses. I hated the overused comparison between the verbal barbarism of the podcasts and the physical barbarism of the podcaster's body. I hated the lazy challenges to a human-animal dichotomy. I hated the humorless attempts at comedy and the insipid images of horror.
It's sick. A twisted Frankenstein of horror comedies, director Kevin Smith tries to combine the freaky weirdness of The Fly with Silence of the Lambs with a knowing sense of humor. He fails. It's never funny or scary and only occasionally disturbing. I had to get out of my chair and leave twice during the viewing because I just couldn't take it anymore. About halfway through the movie, Wallace gets his tongue cut out (or something to that effect), rendering his dialogue for the remainder to be nothing more than gargling screams. The only sense offended worse than hearing, however, is sight. Robert Kurtzman's disgusting walrus bodysuit fits perfectly into the film, that is, a disgusting centerpiece to a cinematic garbage dump.
The only thing I liked in the film was Johnny Depp in his uncredited role as Guy LaPointe. His accent, facial hair, mannerisms are worth a watch. But do yourself a favor and Youtube his scenes. It's not that the movie is just a waste of time. You'll actually wish you could un-see it.
IMDb: Tusk
No comments:
Post a Comment