HALLOWEEN HORROR CHALLENGE movie #25 - SUICIDE (2003)

SUICIDE (2003)
D. Raul Heimrich Yvonne Wunschell
TROMA
S.O.V.

This shocker from Kosovo has been sitting on my shelf for the better part of 8 years. For whatever reason I have never gotten around to watching it until now. There is not much plot to it, a couple are wandering around video taping suicides for their death website. At first just through word of mouth, then as news of the site grows they get more and more people asking them to come witness their death. The more self inflicted killing they see the more tempted they become to lend a helping hand for the sake of good footage. Leading to a final death that is truly shocking because it is so fucking difficult to see where the special effects are.

The movie is basically a voyeuristic journey into death and hinges on which vignette is the most effective. It opens with a man walking up a long flight of stairs explaining to the camera the dozens of ways you could kill yourself and why he wont do any of those. He finally is about to jump off the ledge but can't bring himself to do it, running away. And slipping and falling out of a hole in the floor and severing his head on the way down. But it is his nonchalant discussion of suicide that is the creepiest part of the scene. A later scene with two girls in their 20's overdosing on pills is extremely harrowing and grim. The blonde girl keeps swigging vodka and taking more pills only to vomit them up (for real) immediately) while her girlfriend does not get sick, only sleepy and  then finally dies. There is a guy who eats a shotgun but they cut away before impact thus blowing the whole feeling and making it too easy to see it is an effect. The guy who injects an air bubble into his vein is quite nasty too. And that one is all just acting. The movie gets all the details right; the ritualistic way each person takes off their wedding rings and watches, the difficulty in getting certain suicides to work, how each person panics at the end when they realize the true fatality of the situation. It is grim stuff folks.

Overall this is really just a freak show, but it is undeniable how effective of a freak show it is. It reminded me of the 70's experimental film TEENAGE WASTELAND in which a realistic car crash aftermath is presented as totally real. The same thing is happening here. Certainly not for all tastes, hell even most tastes for that matter. But the movie achieves what it has set out to do.

Review © Andrew Copp

 

A Fist full of AGGRESSION

THE AGGRESSION SCALE (2012)
D. STEVEN C. MILLER
ANCHOR BAY ENT. 
2.35 - 1

This tightly wound little thriller literally hits the ground running when hit-man Lloyd (Dana Ashbrook from TWIN  PEAKS) enters a suburban home and calmly blows the person out the front door with as shotgun in front of their kids. After a couple more equally bloody and unsettling murders we come to find out he is working for local mob boss Mr. Bellevance (Ray Wise). Seems someone has absconded with $500,000 of his money and he is none to happy about it. If Lloyd doesn't get the money in 48 hours, he gets put under the ground.

Then we meet slowly fracturing, newly thrown together family. Bill (Boyd Kestner)and Maggie (Lisa Rotondi) have just gotten married and are moving their two teen aged children up to a new house to start over. The kids are not happy about it. The daughter Lauren (Fabianne Therese) is a typical spoiled bitch who is complaining about everything. But their son Owen (Ryan Hartwig) is a different sort of child, clearly autistic and introverted, he never utters a word throughout the film. But we get wind early on that something is brewing inside of him when he kills a spider with a makeshift blowgun...

Before long Lloyd and his brutal gang of thugs (Including Derek Meyers from the FRIDAY THE 13th remake and THE HILLS HAVE EYES remake) are there killing their way through the supporting cast, but what they didn't count on was the Owen is actually the concern of the title.

What transpires id that this young boy with extreme autism, is actually as dangerous, if not more so, than these thugs and killers. That he has been training himself for survival strategies and this whole situation becomes an extremely bloody game for him.

It would be easy to dismiss THE AGGRESSION SCALE as HOME ALONE for adults. That is the easiest short hand for it. But that also cheapens what is one of the freshest, most exciting thrillers I have watched since HANNA (2011). Constantly exciting, lean and to the point, viciously brutal and uncompromising, it is edge of your seat stuff. Sure there are missteps along the way. Owen's actions are sometimes way too exacting, with him having the forethought to do things that ONLY make sense if he were to know the script itself. The daughter, Lauren, gets really annoying with her teenage angst early on, but thankfully the films spends very little time with that before getting to the action. 

The movie is getting really bad reviews on the IMDB, which just furthers my opinion that the people who leave comments and reviews there are trolls. Check this one out, it is well worth your time.  Review © Andrew Copp


 

GOD BLESS BOBCAT...

GOD BLESS AMERICA (2012)
D. BOBCAT GOLDTHWAIT

MAGNET RELEASING VOD

1.85

Bobcat Goldthwait's new black comedy is surely going to ruffle a few feathers and be wildly misunderstood by many others. If it had gone out wider upon the initial release I would have expected a pretty extreme backlash from the right wing media whom takes a pretty savage beating in the film. Though they are hardly the only targets the movie levels the gun sights on. GOD BLESS AMERICA is a hot lead enema to a society that has lost focus on what is fundamentally decent and kind; a violent black comedy of horror about what happens to a society that has lost the needle on the compass of compassion. .

Joel Murray (yes the brother of Bill) stars as Frank, a man who has had a really shitty couple of days. He already suffers from critical insomnia and asshole neighbors who seem to thrive on being pricks. They are so bad he fantasizes about shotgunning their forever crying infant just to shut them up. He loses his job because he, in a kind gesture, sent flowers to the receptionist because she was having a bad day. She reported him for sexual harassment. His daughter refuses to see him because she is growing up to be just like the awful teen idols she watches on TV, and worst of all he just found out he has fatal brain tumor.

While watching a particularly disgusting evening of slop TV, including an AMERICAN IDOL riff where a clearly mentally handicapped kid becomes a national sensation because his singing is so awful that America embraces him just to laugh. Frank stops himself from committing suicide because he fixates on teen sensation Cloe and just how disgustingly awful of a human being she is. And decides she needs to die. He sets out to do just that, kill this teen bitch queen.

When he actually DOES this, he picks up a new friend in rebellious teenager Roxy (Tara Lynn Barr) who is not only thrilled to have witnessed the crime, but helps set him straight on trying to kill himself again. She then helps him see the light that there are a lot of other people out there just like Cloe that need to be put down for the betterment of mankind. Together they set out on the road to start rubbing out those who are not fit to be in the public eye. Those without the kindness to be around strangers or those close to them.

The film is preachy at times, but I must say I didn't mind because the things Bobcat is preaching are frankly, things I have found myself preaching more than once. The fact that as a society we have lost the ability to be kind, to be non-judgmental, to have actual conversations with out pop-culture or slogans plastered on us like armor. To praise people for lying, cheating and stealing, for making those with no talent absolute heroes.

There are at least three times the movie stops for Frank to go on speeches that are clearly Bobcat's voice where he rants on things like the over-sexualazation of teenage girls (“Fuck R.Kelly and Fuck Woody Allen for the follow your heart to love whoever you want no matter what age bullshit”) or how the media has become the new coliseums of the modern time where we bring in the weak and feeble just to laugh and mock them. He gives the pop culture attacks to Roxy where she goes after music, TV, and movies stars such as a pretty direct assault on the ridiculous and painful writing of DIABLO CODY and how horrific and pandering JUNO was to teenage girls.

Granted for a movie that is taking aim at how our culture has lost sight on being kind, the fact that the two main characters are endlessly killing people could be considered something of missing the point or a misnomer. But that really is just the black comedy of the situation. They are just as much a part of the problem as the people they are killing. Backed into the corner with no way out, no way to force people to listen in a culture that doesn't respond to anything else but violence, violence, violence. .

The first great film of the year. The scene of them killing the teenagers in the movie theater who wont shut up needs to be shown in front of every movie in the United States to get people to put away their cell phones and shut up before every movie.

See this at all costs. Then go be kind to someone.

Review © Andrew Copp