In the Mouth of Madness (1994)

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Director: John Carpenter

Screenplay: Michael De Luca

Cast: Sam Neill as John Trent; Julie Carmen as Linda Styles; Jürgen Prochnow as Sutter Cane; David Warner as Dr. Wrenn; John Glover as Saperstein; Bernie Casey as Robinson

[Major Spoiler Warnings]

Surprisingly difficult to see in the United Kingdom, especially as Carpenter is as popular here as anywhere else, but between this and his collaboration with Tobe Hooper for television called Body Bags (1993), it's one of the few blind spots in a career where even the 1979 Elvis TV movie was released on physical media in the UK. This is a shame as, lore tells us, that In the Mouth of Madness was the last great Carpenter film, which isn't as accurate as that claims but is a tag that was given to one of his most underappreciated works. The nineties was held as where his career wavered, ironically my first films of his Vampires (1998) and Ghosts of Mars (2001) as they were early Sony Pictures DVD released when I grew up with that format becoming a big thing. Before then, Memoirs of an Invisible Man (1992) was seen as a big slip as his first film of the nineties - not as bad as its reputation suggests, but definitely a film lacking his personality. Village of the Damned (1995) has actually grown on me, but it was not seen a powerhouse, and we'll see if the special effects and surfing in Escape from L.A. (1996) are as bad as it sounds.

The first positive credit to In the Mouth of Madness is actually to the screenwriter Michael De Luca, whether his work was adapted exactly from the page or modified out of his hands, as that is a huge factor to this film. His CV as a screenwriter only has three films alongside this, more of executive producer in his career, which include the divisive 1995 Judge Dread film with Sylvester Stallone and Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991), the most derided of that series barring the 2010 remake; in comparison he managed here however to hit the ball out of the park. This film does suggest it's going to be pure cheese, a big metal guitar riff on the John Carpenter and Jim Lang soundtrack just when Sam Neill's name is on the opening credits, but this alongside Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994), rectifying that previous Nightmare on Elm Street film, are two incredibly fascinating meta horror films that came out the same year, certainly a superior pair to Craven's own Scream (1996), which felt pointing out the clichés but not subverting them beyond plot was enough. De Luca with this script found a take on the meta-texture, significantly, which is truly weird and, without nasal gazing, is still idiosyncratic today.

That, in lieu to the King of Yellow, in which author Robert W. Chambers envisioned a text that drove people insane, this film envisions a text, the work of a prolific horror writer Shutter Cane, which will induce nervousness, anxieties and fear upon reading. That's his usual work, and Cane has done so well he's ended up breaking reality itself, as insurance detective John Trent (as played by Sam Neill) is sent on his trail; believing its all a con, Trent instead wanders into the plot of a pulp horror film and eventually an actual pulp horror nightmare land. Its pulp in the truest sense, but it chills the bones a little when Cane, revealed as Jürgen Prochnow with a giant spread of white hair, talks about his work being more wildly read than the Christian Bible. Star Wars has a religion, Jedi, and more people are more likely to know the innings and outings of Harry Potter lore than actually read the Book of Revelations all the way through.

Now imagine if this new book was even more infectious and could poison people further, to madness and violence, even the apocalypse, and In the Mouth of Madness is the closest John Carpenter touched upon the cosmic horror of H.P. Lovecraft, in which beyond the perception of fragile mortal humankind, a novelist can distort reality and be a vessel for horrifying Old Ones to appear through. That they might've been created by him, as it's entirely subjective what exactly his work is or not in what we see, is even more terrifying. It's far more terrifying, as reality eventually splits, the tear reveals that a) the protagonist is a created character, and b) reality has no rules and for a man who believed in logic that term losing meaning is more frightening than monsters. This review has a major spoiler warning, but you couldn't get the true effect of any plot point without the images themselves.

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Carpenter as always is a classist who shots the film with elegance, famously a man who grew up admiring film makers like Howard Hawks, wanted to make films like his in genres like Westerns, but came about in a time where he proved a daub hand in horror and sci-fi. Any moments of broadness - a bicyclist turning husk-like or the guitar riffs in the score, don't undercut the tone in the slightest or his precise filmmaking. In fact the film itself eventually gets around to mocking plot points in pulp horror, like Neil's counterpart, Julie Carmen, suddenly trying to seduce him in the nightmare town "because the author wrote it that way". (Which is hilarious as, whilst he didn't write the film but collaborated on it greatly, Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982) despite being one of my favourite horror sequels has this absurd cliché depicted completely seriously).

The distinction here to Carpenter's other films is how over-the-top and phantasmagoric this gets. We've had The Thing (1982) in terms of body horror, but In the Mouth of Madness is lurid and intense with this from the beginning. All when a publicist goes axe happy, the film gets increasingly weirder and more grotesque in body mutations and freakishness as the film draws from horror as a genre in general, the Lovecraftian horrors against a pastiche of Stephen King's popularity, apt as by this point even TV let alone film gorged on adapting King's books.

The film finds the right balance of credibility by having seriousness against this, because it plucks symbolism from the entire genre - terrifying possessed children; monstrous entities; religious horror; plenty that is slowly drip feeding and helped by Sam Neill being the cynical sceptic who plays the anchor. We realise his fate already - the film starts with him in a mental health hospital as he tells his story to David Warner - but Neill finds the right tone for a man who is stoic even to the most horrifying things until it gets too much, not surprising as whilst the New Zealand born actor as always come off as meek and affable, he was in Andrzej Żuławski's Possession (1981) going batshit insane, so this film would've been a cakewalk.

The build for the film, when it's already gone off the deep end, is still slow burn because Carpenter finds idiosyncratic ways to move the film's nightmares. A reoccurring image of a police officer randomly beating a man up in a dark alley or how the author's favourite colour drives a man to screaming are among such examples; all never heavy handed because the film is so over-the-top its gone to that tone the moment you encounter Hobb's End, the nightmare town whose own name is even a reference to Quatermass and the Pit, giving you an idea how in depth some of the references are.

The other aspect, in honesty, that whilst H.P. Lovecraft is an author whose work is still innovative and powerful for me, I am also aware that a reader can find his elaborately descriptive vocabulary and exaggerated tone utterly ridiculous, befitting this film's many moments of absurdity, like strange fish-like Old Ones they wisely left as shadows only, and possibly another reason why it's been a huge issue to adapt his work straight rather than evoke for cinema. Befittingly like those stories, insanity is the end, though few would watch themselves in the film they have seen when they finally snap; between this and Wes Craven's New Nightmare we had two of the best of these meta films as far back in the nineties, where more well known films like Scream and The Cabin in the Woods (2012) just come off as flaky in comparison. This, really needing to be more easily available, is definitely as well a gem in John Carpenter's crown.

Abstract Spectrum: Grotesque/Surreal/Meta

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

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My Lovely Burnt Brother and His Squashed Brain (1988)

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Directors: Giovanni Arduino and Andrea Lioy

Screenplay: Giovanni Arduino and Andrea Lioy

Cast: Anne Tzakol as Jenny; Bernie Burnt as Himself; Mefi as the Dentist; John J. Bridge as Sleazy Client 1; Nick Tortone as Sleazy Client 2; Paul Delos as Sleazy Client 3

With that title, this definitely wins you over to watching it, but let's be brutal and admit that for every piece of art that has a great title, a large percentage of the films in this catagory never live up to them. (One of the few exceptions being Italian giallos, ironically in lieu to this Italian production) This is a curious case in the annuals of Italian horror schlock, made in the late eighties before the genre industry sadly collapsed; this shot-on-video production feels entirely alien to the industry, managing to be something from the underground of that country. That it somehow ended up with English subtitles is an entirely different issue to ask questions about as the film itself considering what you encounter. Admittedly, as what the likes of Bleeding Skull have proven, the site responsible for me learning of this film, a lot was released on video and even DVD especially in the USA, so you expect the unexpected. This one does have something that takes you back when the prologue to the film-within-a-film advises you to drink many "El Cheapo Beers", all whilst the film's "producer" warns you the films going to be terrible.

How the film ever got to the USA, as this has been brought up by the Bleeding Skull alumni of obscure shot-on-video/no-budget curiosities, I don't know but it's definitely the mangled results of trying to shock people and possibly drinking all the beers it recommended during its production. The most commonly accessible version, as this only really exists in bootleg, is difficult to read subtitles which complicated things, the metaphorical equivalent of vaporwave computer vision syndrome which doesn't help,, but the film in general is a maddening experience. It argues that the unpredictable improvisation of micro-budget cinema can be special but also its own worth enemy, My Lovely Burnt Brother... a mix of a story with a series of (something random) vignettes throughout which had moments I liked but others which dragged on.

The core of all this, the title, stems from a dental assistant Jennifer and her brother Bernie, a major burn victim who hides his severely disfigured face under a KKK mask, merely just to provide shock rather than the film wanting to tackle the issues of racism. He's also a heroin addict as a result of the injuries he's sustained; after dealing with some incredibly sexist pigs in her work, she finds to her surprise that injecting her own urine into Bernie than smack causes her to be able to control him, perfect for dealing with gutting those pigs.

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Beyond this, the film is a mere string of gore scenes and random incidents, random to the point the film will abruptly cut at one moment to a man castrating himself with a pair of garden shears, with the blades just off camera below, and then proceeding to eat them. None of it is more than to deliberately shock the viewer with tasteless content, and a lot of it has no direct connection to the slasher film like plot I have detailed with Bernie; instead, a lot of it feels completely improvised with a ramshackle tone, only really connected by the violent adventures of Bernie. On one hand the improvised feel can be a virtue, where there's inexplicably a murder involving flesh eating eels from New Jersey filling a bathtub, which abruptly involves a fake nature factoid about the creatures which was an inspired touch, but there's a lot that is really distracting or has no impact because its crammed together.

The rest, even in mind the version I saw was a violently damaged copy which made it harder to watch, is a mess. You are introduced to a female ex-punk rocker/improvised detective whose thoughts move out to a series of dull monochrome flashbacks about her cowboy father and who he was bumped off, which we could've done without. (Having her at his grave be thrown a guitar and starting a song that breaks the verisimilitude does lighten the mood, but could've had a better contrivance to get to it). My Lovely Burnt Brother... as a result shows that the virtue that everyone can grab a camera as technology has improved is a double-edged sword, neither a detraction against micro-budget schlock cinema as that can be inventive and inspired. This on the other hand, even if it throws in musical numbers and other abrupt material that would be fun in another context, shows what happens when there's a lack of coordination, leading to it stumbling over a lot of banality in among the glistening giblets of interest.

It also emphasises that gore is not enough, even if you have a man's face sliced like salami on a very-low budget. Instead, probably the more interesting moments of the film were when it went for pure surreal humour rather than blood or offense, like envisioning one of the potential male victims wooing a sex doll over a homemade dinner. Neither does it help My Lovely Burnt Brother... doesn't end well, leaving on an utter muddle of a finale asking who the real monsters, not exactly a film that has earned the ability to raise that question in the slightest. Its definitely a weirdo curiosity, one which has moments I liked, and its abstract in having to try and ingest this all sober let alone drink as the film itself recommends. However, My Lovely Burnt Brother and His Squashed Brain is also a title in need to have be used for a more interesting film. Also, arguably the film should be disqualified from an abstract rating for cheating, due to how it's so abruptly put together rather than purposely so.

Abstract Spectrum: Grotesque/Random/Weird

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

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Garth Marenghi's Darkplace (2004)

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Director: Richard Ayoade

Screenplay: Richard Ayoade and Matthew Holness

Cast: Matthew Holness as Garth Marenghi/Dr. Rick Dagless, M.D; Richard Ayoade as Dean Learner/Thornton Reed; Matt Berry as Todd Rivers/Dr. Lucien Sanchez; Alice Lowe as Madeleine Wool/Dr. Liz Asher

In probably one of the more controversial opinions I'll ever have, I found Garth Marenghi's Darkplace disappointing, a cult gem from Channel 4 that is highly regarded, whose reputation only from six episodes makes it quite depressing I found them slightly amusing but average altogether as I marathoned the entire series.

The premise, even with the DVD release, is that Garth Marenghi (played by Matthew Holness) is a real horror author, possibly a piss take of Dean Koontz or James Herbert¹, who is the definition of a man with his head up his arse, thinking of himself as the messiah of horror who can even have profound insights to help humanity but a tawdry author of terrible ideas and dialogue. At some point, he worked on a TV series which he directed himself and starred in the main role, as the former warlock doctor Dr. Rick Dagless M.D at Darkplace Hospital, who with side characters encounters increasingly weird and horrifying work, only for the series to be canned. In kayfabe Channel 4 in 2004 asked for those episodes to be dusted off, only six as the actual Garth Marenghi's Darkplace series is a one season wonder, but Marenghi in the series-within-the-series was allowed to shoot interviews, mainly with his publisher Dean Learner (Richard Ayoade) who starred as Darkplace Hospital's administrator Thornton Reed too, and later on Todd Rivers (Matt Berry), an actor on the show whose visibly become the stereotype of the older star reduced to drinking a lot.

Darkplace the series, which exists spliced in these interview segments and an introduction to each episode by Marenghi, is a farce that's badly acted with a comical amount of slow motion in the second episode to pad the run time, and with threats varying from new female staff member Dr. Liz Asher (Alice Lowe) going on a rampage with her psychic powers or a "Scottish Mist", leading to Dagless learning to overcome his intolerance to the Scottish and Marenghi having to dodge accusations of racism against the Scottish in his interview footage.

The problem for me with Darkplace is that the structure is a paradoxical one to work with. To create a technically awful programme could lead to making a dreadful show because it is too accurate to the most dreary of this type of programming; instead its deliberately broad, which leads to an ironic tone I have always found tedious, growing when this became more common as a form of parody, and with the inherent issue that, if you are going to parody this type of program, lurid pulp television, it needs to be as accurate to what a terrible eighties horror program should be and work its humour from the tone. The idea, though it's a Channel 4 production, evokes a BBC show if the quality slipped down, to which your material to parody this content should come from any misfire to even when highly regarded work slips in the research, such as the case (admittedly not a Dr. Who viewer but aware of this) when apparently Bertie Bassett, the mascot of a British confectionary company, terrorised Sylvester McCoy in his sci-fi candy lab².

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As much of the issue is that the central joke, that Garth Marenghi is clueless to how bad he is, is driven to the ground, so everything must reflect the tone of this rather than take the tone of Airplane! (1980), of playing everything deathly serious where the broad absurdity rear its head among recreations of an actual disaster film the creators were using for direct reference. The one moment that looks like it's going to match this tone is the final episode, which feels like Nigel Kneale's Quatermass mini-series if someone turned into alien broccoli rather than a blob. The entire premise beyond this is sound and can be built off if it had been done right. Imagining a combination medical soap opera and horror story is amusing, and the little details show there was a concerted attempt at something special but Darkplace is played too broadly on purpose, a lot of the cast and tone too mannered, the dialogue full of quirky moments meant to be funny, which poses another issue (that is a plague of comedy in general) that the plot's not even a basic barebones most episodes to lead to some dynamic tension. Where there is no real plot trajectory, I usually tune out eventually.

Cast wise, it's mainly the core four members who dominate the series barring a few surprise cameos, like Stephen Merchant or Julian Barratt as the hospital priest, emphasising that even before his role in Peter Strickland's bizarre horror film In Fabric (2018) he could add gravitas even to the silliest of material, or add a much needed sense of absurdity to even serious material. Matthew Holness as Garth Marenghi, both the writer and star, is interesting, but I'll be honest in saying the joke of a dumb, egotistic, sexist hack writer does feel somewhat one dimensional at some point, where the series would've struggled if this had gone for more series in making him compelling onwards. Richard Ayoade as his publicist however hits the right tone - off the show he's a sleaze but in a subtle way that's funnier, whilst as the administrator of the Darkplace hospital, Ayoade inflects perfectly a man who cannot act and was allowed to improvise way too much of his dialogue. Matt Berry likewise hits to the right one too, as a hammy actor who adds w-e-i-g-h-t to his vocals in a way that's memorable. Sadly Alice Lowe as the sole female character is undercut by one of the major running gags which emphasises a huge paradox in mocking the un-enlightened nature of past pop culture; the joke is that, reflecting its author Marenghi, the series has incredibly sexist dialogue and views of Dr. Liz Asher, playing her off as the simplistic female staff member, or in episode 2 going full-Carrie to the point people are menaced by staplers and furniture on string, which presents an issue that the character is so marginalised in the mocking of the sexism of the past the show itself marginalised Lowe herself with a very limited amount to the work with, backfiring as a result.  

That latter example with Lowe really works as a metaphor for all my issues with Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, that it spends so much time mocking the chintzy tone that it's marginalised necessary structural details like tone, plotting and content; no matter how bad in look on purpose, you still need to engage with on some emotional level. Out of six episodes, they blur considerably together in terms of none of them particularly standing out. Episode one introduces the premise, where Dagless' warlock past comes to haunt him, which leaves little time to work with, whilst episode 2 falls into the flaws mentioned that, entirely about mocking the show within the show's sexism and (at that point) potential misogyny, it itself unintentionally sidelines and mocks the main female character.

Episode three tries a little better, in which Dagless' past trauma of losing his half-man half-grasshopper son leaves him trying to protect a potentially dangerous eyeball child, whilst Episode 4 imagines contaminated water turning the hospital into primordial ape people. By Episode 5 and 6, whilst not perfect, you do get some of the better episodes. Episode 5 is Scotch Mist, which arguably is still as ballsy today in how it envisions Marenghi's attempt to be tolerant to the Scottish still comes off as offensive, when kilt wearing Scottish ghosts leave oats behind murder scenes and Dagless recounts a nightmarish experience in a fish and chips shop. Episode 6 is probably the one closest, just needing a shove, to what the tone for the whole series should've been if it had played itself as being more serious and less ironic in tone, in which Lucien Sanchez falls in love with a female patient slowly turning into alien broccoli, a highly contagious mutation that does feel like soap opera, Nigel Kneale and a healthy dose of sex humour in a blender if it had be rewritten a little. It at least allows Matt Berry more material to work with, which is for the better; it also has the one actual surprise where the episode abruptly turns into a synthpop music video for the character, which was a completely acceptable example of breaking the verisimilitude I could applaud for its humour.

Altogether, it eventually started to sink in I wasn't gaining a lot from this series. Admittedly, this is a case of acquired taste, because I have always taken an issue to ironic humour; it neither helps I have gladly swam through the shores of technically and artistically incompetent entertainment, able to deduct that this is too broad and doesn't in the slightest look or feel like bad horror. The additional exaggeration instead comes off as patience testing for me, turning it all into a one note joke that has barely lingered.

Abstract Spectrum: Absurd/Ironic

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

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==========

1) Not in the slightest a knock against either man, whose work as a horror fan together I need to one day fully invest in; but particurlaly with their commonality in appearing in second hand book stores in the United Kingdom, least in my neck fo the woods, and Herbert's blunt titles and covers does really evoke the absurder, crasser ones Marenghi's has as seen.

2) Kandyman, a creature that, befittingly, comes from the 1988 era of Dr. Who and emphases how actual eighties television, though Darkplace is meant to be the early eighties, could've really played to a deadpan tone from real source material.

Hip-Hop Locos (2001)

Director: Lorenzo Munoz Jr.

Screenplay: Lorenzo Munoz Jr.

Cast: Unodoz as Unodoz; J10 as J10; Jose E. as the Carjack Victim; Phil Green as the Weed Dealer; Manuel Erives as Cocaine Dealer #2; Aubrey Flowers as the Studio Cocaine Dealer; J.J. Martinez as the Shotgun Gangster

Obscurities, Oddities and One-Offs

Two Hispanic wannabe hip hop superstars plan to acquire the funds and equipment to start their careers, even if it means killing a drug dealer and stealing his blow, and working their way from there; these two, Unodoz and J10 (playing versions of themselves at least in name) are going for a full home run on the same night to achieve their goal. Inherently Hip-Hop Locos is an interesting idea, and imagining a micro-budget tale set at one night, even with stolen shots of urban nightlife, on this premise is enticing, as this anti-hero duo drive across dank streets and freeways on a dangerous mission. Hell, for all that I will get to in a minute, the hip hop instrumental score is also honestly good music and the most rewarding part of the actual film as it plays over the images for me.

Unfortunately, Hip-Hop Locos is not a great film beyond said music but is instead a curiosity from the early 2000s era of no-budget digital filmmaking that many won't be able to sit through, just from how rough the film is in its look and for its bad content. Hip-Hop Locos can also have an alternative title "Padding: The Movie", which is the other crippling flaw at hand. For as simplistic a premise as it has, which doesn't need to be tampered with at all, it's broken by how the film instead drags on, not a slow art house minimalism but procrastinating indulgence to be able to make the film long enough to be a film. The kind where the most infamous scene, if you have ever heard of the film, is how long the strangulation of a drug dealer takes in a barely lit car; the idea of showing how murder is an agonising process in any other context would be interesting, but that wasn't clearly intentional just from the repeating of "Choke him!" over and over again in the soundtrack to the point of an aneurysm.

I haven't dared even mention that most of the film is barely lit, faces half hidden in the dark as this is all set at night, eyes not even visible on Unodoz and J10 due to this. To be honest, I could've lived with this if deliberate, like a low-fi version of Michael Mann's post-digital films, as it certainly adds to the mood. It does in this come off more as distracting aesthetic oddities especially as it feels hastily put together. The infra-red night footage does jar, and there's a prolonged scene of smoking week which leads to computer distortion effects anyone could've used on their PCs at the time, not an insult except for the fact this particular scene is distracting and lasts too long. Less pleasing too is the muffled sound, which doesn't have an atmosphere and is just a deterrent.

All of this however I could put up with; what kills the film even for a masochist for me is how bland everything is. The problem with a lot of genre cinema, regardless of budget, is when you want to make a film but your sense of dialogue is perfunctory and the ideas bland. Which is worse as this type of improvised low budget cinema works, an alternative world where a film like this with improvised banter and slang would've appealed to me, as are the scenes of our leads rapping the narrative so far to the camera. Instead, this is a film where the leads are so adamant to present themselves as cool that the machismo is just tedious. This more than the terrible technical craft is much more of an issue as, whilst the craft could be done deliberately and pose a potent effect, there is no real virtue in the attitude, the laboured attempt to clearly push one over as tough and cool to the point it becomes comical. Also this is weirdly fetishishtic, to the point you are going to see, if you track this film down for yourself, a scene where focused on one of their hands the pair of anti-heroes putting objects like a bag of blow and weapons in a bag than taking them out again and generally rearranging them, fingering the objects like this is meant to be objectified over as symbols for reasons difficult to decode.

This particularly sucks as the elephant in the room is that, even into the 2010s, one should ask if the representation of Hispanic Americans in American cinema is fully there, and also in lieu to the idea that whilst no film should not represent a whole group of people, Hip-Hop Locos dicking about like this is just going to be embarrassing for anyone. It comes off, speaking as someone who admits he's a white Englishman whose knowledge of rap is woefully malnourished, as absurd as is always an issue with some iconography of hip-hop, as bad as say the worst of heavy metal in the asinine toughness. Even if this was meant to be intentionally dark and nasty, which I could've gotten by on, it instead comes off in tone as boys playing adult gangsters in comparison to the intense nightmarish rush you could just get listening to Natural Born Killaz by Ice-T and Dr. Dre.

It's undeniably a slog to sit through, one most people would find unbearable to sit through, made worse as when the film's end credits include thank you wishes to family and children, a review this is harsh even for an obscure older film is still squashing a production by another human being. But it's not a good film unless subjectively you can put up with its various issues, and few probably would if I made an honest snap judgement. The result just comes off as a slight and mishandled obscurity that didn't succeed.

Abstract Rating: Moody

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

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Tusk (2014)

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Director: Kevin Smith

Screenplay: Kevin Smith

Cast: Michael Parks as Howard Howe; Justin Long as Wallace Bryton; Genesis Rodriguez as Ally Leon; Haley Joel Osment as Teddy Craft; Guy LaPointe as Guy LaPointe; Ralph Garman as Detective Garmin; Jennifer Schwalbach Smith as Ms. McKenzie; Harley Quinn Smith as Colleen McKenzie; Lily-Rose Depp as Colleen Collette

[Major Spoiler Warnings]

Kevin Smith is a director I am openly alien to - the only film I saw in my youth was Dogma (1999), and when I saw Clerks (1994) it vanished from memory at a young cineaste's age. His entire "View Askewniverse" world and cult of personality however is one I will eventually have to return to; a distinct part of his career isn't just the films themselves, but that he has sustained a fandom just from recorded talks and podcasts when he wasn't making films, so there's a lot of personality to consider.

There was always one that would've been on my radar regardless of interest or lack of, when a podcast conversation about an imagined premise for a walrus tickled Smith pink so much he asked his fans to vote on whether the film or not. The result, unless you come from another dimension where people said know, is the tale of a podcaster being violently turned into a human walrus up in the Canadian wilderness, one that proved polarising and bloody weird.

Tusk's origins do suggest pure ironic existence, especially as a piece of the original podcast is laced over the end credits, but the idea of this being an ironic anti-film is undercut by actually watching Tusk, a strange tonal experience of a comedy horror which is still pretty gruesome, still pretty tragic for the characters, and yet is a peculiar and inherently funny premise matched by a suddenly jump into farce. Effectively it's The Human Centipede (2009) if it was made to actually engaging the audience than just making the most predictable results, as nothing in Tusk is boring even if a viewer hates it.

Justin Long plays a podcaster named Wallace Bryton, an edgelord for a lack of subtlety whose show 'Not-See", the name of which is meant to evoke another certain name when you pronounce it and is a plot point in the problems it causes. His show is meant to take the piss out of peoples' strange experiences and people on the fringes he meets, in hindsight really evoking the wave of problematic internet celebrities even if they turned out to be on YouTube and getting into actual accusations of glorifying Nazis ideals. Already this is setting up a karmic journey, especially as dialogue scenes with his girlfriend Ally Leon (Genesis Rodriguez) do evoke how he was once a kind person who became cynical; I have no issue with this character being utterly unlikable as it creates the route to his folly, where his original choice, a Canadian teenage who chopped his leg off by accident making a Kill Bill fan video for online, commits suicide before he can meet him and leads him to Howard Howe (Michael Parks). Howe is an old man whose tales of meeting Ernest Hemingway when he was prevented from joining the D-Day landings in World War II and marine adventure entice the younger man even if Bryton still wants to take the piss out of him. Then Howe proceeds to drug Bryton with his tea, leading to a story where you sympathetic with the agony even a person like Bryton will go through.

Here I immediately give the film credit as, in lieu to being a director-writer who likes his dialogue and famously the man who wondered (through his characters) what happened to all the construction staff on the Death Star, Kevin Smith does make the dialogue scenes in Tusk compelling. It was unexpected for him to remotely even have a tangent to Hemingway and nautical storytelling, but with the help of Park being the best performance in the film, it's a surprisingly mature thing rarely found in horror cinema to have the initial dialogue scenes between Park and Long, made even more surprising knowing Tusk eventually gets into diarrhea jokes too halfway through.

From https://static.rogerebert.com/uploads/review/
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And Michael Park does steal the film. The was not the first time he worked with Smith, another of the director's fascinating curiosities being Red State (2011), his first horror film and a condemnation of religious zealot from a man who was Catholic himself at the time, but Park's existence here adds some credibility to an odd premise. That Howe, when he drugs Bryton, is going to turn him into a human walrus companion, in context of a trauma involving shipwrecked with only such a mammal as company on an island. This is where I struggle with just believing Tusk was Smith just getting high and just making a dumb film, as having encountered examples of half arsed, intentionally "bad" films, Tusk plays seriously and only starts getting odd when a certain character appears. Even beyond that, when Park's character opens up as a psychologically and physically abused child who grew up into this serial killer with a twisted modus operandi, it's a dark film at its heart even when it gets intentionally silly, a tightrope between seriousness and comedy that is legitimately strange.

Certainly it gets nasty, where Long has to act in a walrus costume of flesh unable to communicate more than noises for dialogue, Smith to his credit not pulling punches in imagining his mad premise in full body horror grossness, be it the legs of victims being carved into tusks or Park constantly trying to force Long to eat raw fish. Where it gets curious is in mind to this having been a planned first film in a trilogy of Canadian set horror films. Smith apparently likes Canada, plants a lot of Canadian references throughout Tusk, and even sets up the second film, Yoga Hosers (2016), with the first appearances of two teenage girls who work at a convenience store. These two characters, the leads of the second film, are played by Smith's own daughter Harley Quinn Smith and Johnny Depp's daughter Lily-Rose Depp. And yes, Johnny Depp is in the film too, and this is where I'm certain Tusk's notorious reactions actually stem from.

This is the thing - Johnny Depp, as former French Canadian police detective Guy LaPointe, tracking down Howe over a long period of time, is still acting here. There's been a view that, in these later years, Depp has turned into a man who wears strange costumes and puts on mannerisms, but LaPointe is still a performance that required a lot of talent to even pull off. The issue is that LaPointe also sounds stoned with a stereotypical accent, the kind of man who'd be flatulent if you sat near him as he buys ridiculous amounts of food at a fast-food restaurant, and is the entrance way for the broader comedy for the most part. I will hold LaPointe as entirely subjective in terms of whether he's good or absolutely agonising for each individual viewer. Thankfully the most extreme of this ridiculousness is just one single scene - where Depp and Park's characters encounter each other in a flashback and Park takes on a bizarre half mumbled voice, in context to clearly hide himself, becoming near unintelligible as they discuss has poutine causes diarrhea. It's a scene in most films where I'd be goading my eyes out, but here however, it's sandwiched in the midst of a production that has been constantly undercutting itself with curious oddness like this throughout.

In fact, for myself, if it'd been a regular horror film, I don't think Tusk would've sustained itself even with its surprisingly bleak ending, Depp's appearance preventing the conventionality and banality of the middle act, where Genesis Rodriguez and Haley Joel Osment try to track down Long in Canada themselves, but bringing his character in. The abrupt inclusion of comedy through Depp, and Park even putting on his own walrus suit for his final plan, actually adds a jolt of much needed energy which allows Kevin Smith to play off the ending with even more powerful. Does it amount to anything? Honestly, it feels like a lark, but Smith ends the film as a tragedy, skirting jokingly around the idea of human versus beast by way of man versus walrus, only to push it to a conclusion where Justin Long's character is psychologically damaged to the point he becomes a human-walrus hybrid, one which leaves him in the final scene left in an actual zoo whilst his girlfriend in tears keeps appearing to try to get him back as a person. It's a powerful ending, with only the fact that Smith includes the podcast segment over the end credits arguably undercutting the moment. Smith for all the silliness at hand had the decency to still play the film seriously, and whilst this could all be ironic, it's an irony which thankfully isn't deliberately bad, but pointedly allows the film to be viewed seriously. One of the tragedy of a man, a bad man but one who could be redeemed, that is played out as a drama; even the humour with Depp and poutine has a dark edge to it which suits to the tone perfectly.

Tusk as a result is a lot more rewarding than many horror films in all honestly, Kevin Smith effectively taking a bad straight-to-video horror film, where the execution would be average, and everything was played as cheaply and lazily as possible, and plays it as well as he could. His filming style here is pretty basic in presentation, but even if he intended it to be laughed at whilst high on weed, he had the decency to film a premise with a level of quality and intention I wish more films like this had. Sadly, the Canadian trilogy has stopped short at Yoga Hosers, which didn't even get a UK DVD release here. At this current point, the plan is Jay and Silent Bob Reboot (2019) and a return to the View Askewniverse, which might be interesting or sadly a departure from this curious series of horror films in his career that caught me with immense interest.

Abstract Spectrum: Grotesque/Silly/Weird

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

From https://24miles.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/52718274.jpg

The Needle (1988)

From https://img01litfund.ru/images/lots
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Director: Rashid Nugmanov

Screenplay: Aleksandr Baranov and Bakhyt Kilibayev

Cast: Viktor Tsoi as Moro; Marina Smirnova as Dina; Aleksandr Bashirov as Spartak; Pyotr Mamonov as Artur Yusupovich

Obscurities, Oddities and One-Offs

The Needle qualifies as a unique venture - Rashid Nugmanov, a Kazakh director, would remake Seven Samurai/The Magnificent Seven as the 1993 "Ostern" called The Wild East before becoming a political activist against his country's president Nursultan Nazarbayev whilst living in France, and its star Viktor Tsoi would tragically die in a car crash only 2 years later. Tsoi also happened to be the lead singer and lyricalist of the Soviet post-post band Kino, whose music scores The Needle and were an influential band in Russian music; Tsoi became an idol into the modern age, probably as much due to his abrupt death at only twenty eight years old but because of Kino's reputation too.

He looks like a post punk James Dean and whilst his acting is mannered, you couldn't have chosen the right person but Tsoi to star as an enigmatic wander named Moro who returns to find his girlfriend Dina (Marina Smirnova) on drugs and helping to peddle them. Lightning was caught in a bottle with The Needle as, in the former Soviet Union, this became a cult film preserved as an important historical artefact decades later. Honestly, when I first saw The Needle years ago I hated it, not prepared for films whose narrative thrusts like this one's which are more looser in tone, something I forgot returning to the movie and greatly appreciating much more now. Opening with a narrator who spells out the artifice of the world in front of the audience, it plays off as a gritty punk fantasy, playing in how everything is depicted.

That Moro returns in his girlfriend's life, crossing paths with a drug selling doctor and Mono taking her to the desert-like Aral Sea to go cold turkey, told in a form more concerned with telling the tale in images and a lot of directorial choices which are non-linear even in a linear narrative. It neither comes off as merely ironic either which is a surprise, an earnest coolness to The Needle which is found just in the music by Kino. The edginess of this film has softened over the years, but when characters just casually inject themselves with needles, it would've probably been a shock to witness, as is how the scenes of Tsoi using martial arts chops to fight off multiple men at once vastly contrasting the stereotypical image of Soviet Union art house cinema but having a genre energy to it. Yet it it's also sincere and wears a heart on its sleeve, how undeniably some of the images shot are beautiful, such as finding a husk of a ship in the middle of the desert or the snow covered path in the final scene.

This is a very urban, hostile world onscreen where even a public bathing/swimming pool for one person looks like it's in an underground bunker, but it's also certainly of the time in a enticing way, a reminder that long after the punk movement deflated in the late seventies in Britain, cinema in particular in the eighties got a shot in the arm of fascinating aesthetics in cinema like this let alone in the English speaking countries. Tsoi himself as a filmmaker also adds very unconventional stylistic touches he deserves praise for, usually involving television in that alongside the narrator he has sound bites from TV interject in the material as if emotional motifs. In general, the film doesn't lie that it is a cinematic construct and plays off this even in the last audio you heard after the end credits.

From https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/w500_and_
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However, as mentioned, it still contains a lot of personality. The music, its lyrics especially, are earnest odes to one's own individuality in an optimistic way. There's also the background details to consider, notably that Tsoi was Soviet-Korean, whose family from his father's side connects to a large Korean immigrant population in Soviet states, never in the slightest part of the plot but, alongside an older man he encounters in the desert and friends (and drug peddlers) in the cast played by Korean actors, is a huge cultural mark that can be sadly neglected when we just presume Soviet Union cinema just involves Russian cinema. Kazakhstan had a New Wave in the late eighties of their own, and it's interesting that alongside The Needle the other film that helped start it is the impressive masterpiece Revenge (1989), explicitly starting in ancient Korean before following a Korean character, part of the "Koryo-saram" of Koreans in Soviet countries like Kazakhstan, in a morally complicated story of revenge, thus really reminding one beyond the films themselves cinema is a huge cultural text in everyone who works in front of and behind the camera.

Also the mere fact I am calling this a Kazakh film than Soviet is important; Kazakhstan in particular for me, growing as an adult in the 2000s, has unfortunately been undermined by Sacha Baron Cohen's Borat character, which played off a stereotype that is offensive, to which a film like this and a character like Moro drastically challenges for the better in its modernity. Generally, the growing campaign in recognition of the individual countries part of the Soviet Union in cinema is a vital necessity, be it learning Man With A Movie Camera (1929) is being claimed as an Ukrainian film due to where it is shot or making sure this significant cult gem The Needle gets preserved.

This is more poignant as, finally being able to see a good looking version of the aforementioned Needle, it's a damn good film, whose mix of shooting in late eighties urban locations, even an abandoned zoo environment for a curious encounter, is matched by overtly stylish mythologizing, as Tsoi himself let alone the character is played literally as an immortal wanderer. It still feels modern, still hip, whilst a time capsule, the music of Kino just adding to the strengths of the film by adding evocative music and lyrics. [Thankfully, the version I saw had English subtitles for the songs too, adding so much more context].   

If anything, it does add sadness that, never hearing of Kino's music barring here, Tsoi did die as abruptly as he did, a figure made immortal here with a sincere charm. The point that [Spoiler Warning] he shrugs off a stabbing and neuters a tragic ending and [Spoiler Ends] Moro never shows any sense he's in danger is not a detraction, merely symbolising the wandering hero of mythology and multiple cultures in the past, here a real life cool figure in his trench coat who wanders off in the background in the snow. Real life sadly took him just in 1990 but Tsoi, thanks to Rashid Nugmanov and the production, lived on and The Needle is in dire need of being better known.

From http://2016.eurasiaiff.com/wp-content/uploads/
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Class Relations (1984)

From https://pics.filmaffinity.com
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Directors: Jean-Marie Straub and Danielle Huillet

Based on the novel Amerika by Franz Kafka

Cast: Christian Heinisch as Karl Roßmann; Nazzareno Bianconi as Giacomo; Mario Adorf as Onkel; Laura Betti as Brunelda; Harun Farocki as Delamarche; Manfred Blank as Robinson; Reinald Schnell  as Heizer; Anna Schnell as Line; Klaus Traube as Kapitän; Georg Brintrup as Student; Hermann Hartmann as Oberkassierer; Gérard Semaan as Schubal; Jean-François Quinque as Stewart; Villi Vöbel as Pollunder

Straub-Huillet adapting Franz Kafka? Yes, that did happen and this is the most accessible of their films as a linear narrative, whilst not losing an ounce of their difficult idiosyncratic style. Class Relations is based on Kafka's unfinished novel Amerika, where he notably never travelled to America but created a version based upon research and his fears, is still an unconventional production in that it is a minimalistic, slow paced work in which a German immigrant to the United States finds himself falling through an exploitative world that makes no sense, all depicted by the directors' stark static shots and precise formal style with an eye laser focused against this kind of capitalist environment.

Or at least the type of structure this calmly hellish, in which the protagonist is a prop from the get-go, when he drops his suitcase on the ship he is on to find his lost umbrella, only to get lost and find himself in an argument with the administration on the ship over the treatment over a minor staff member. In the midst of class bias, complete lies and people desiring to even force him into servant hood, all of it fits into Kafka's take on an illogical world but also suits Straub's Marxist viewpoint, the title change adamant to the issues tackled here. Thankfully, the acting is not the deliberately flat performances of a few early seventies experiments of theirs, but with a cast that occasionally break out into gravitas, usually from the middle management who are selfish and deceitful, whilst a lot of the performances are a minimalistic acting style common from the auteurs that does succeed completely.

Whilst Class Relations is a slow film in pacing, this has to be one of the most dynamic of Straub-Huillet's fictional films as they structure the film over dramatic vignettes where their lead wanders through like a deer in the headlights. No one barring a few people are truly kind, fellow wanderers raiding his suitcase or trying to force him into servitude, and even those who are kind to him can lose their respect for him if lies are said of him being a lewd, unprofessional employee without proof.

From https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3QN2id17kDJRP5v8qHR5BejVZJVSw0FcVTzp9YkxyzrzKzfxzO7S1OR4extGIZ55AHYF4GB-GMumNtzwVHUww8C1d0qBitPj3BDZNPsPTNIlw6ABBsInsYGXetB5btsSbopLd4gDlbQls/s1600/1984+Klassenverhaltnisse+suitcase.JPG

"Kafkaesque" is the notion of an oppressive/nightmarish world of rules and orders which do not make sense. The Castle famously is about a man who cannot get to his goal due to rules and contradictions, which stalls his ability to even to get to the titular castle and befittingly, as another unfinished novel of Kafka's, ends halfway through a sentence. Class Relations imagines this as calmly as you can get, when Orson Welles had to create a highly stylised world for his 1962 adaptation of The Trial, but the notion of Kafkaesque is found here in a different way. Simply as one obstruction along the way is just being forced out on a balcony of an apartment as the mistress of the apartment changes, which means the protagonist is not allowed to re-enter unless told he can. The fact [a Major but subjective spoiler] the film ends with him on a trail on his way to a job suggests a happy ending, but the tone does suggest how it could easily fall into more illogical rules as he claws for even some wages to live off.

It makes Class Relations a faithful work but also succeeds for the directors as everything they depict, no matter how strange, could easily happen in real life in how they show it in a banal, matter-of-fact way. Straub and Huillet adapted Amerika with very clear reasoning and succeeded. In terms of the production, this marks a return to the monochrome films of their career of the sixties, when they had worked in colour for their documentaries and fiction films through the seventies. Possibly the choice was a) for period tone, or maybe even b) as a film shot mostly in Germany (with inserts of American locations) with the cast mainly speaking German to create their own version of America in lieu to possible practical restrictions; it nonetheless suits the tone entirely. Their style for non-documentary films was fully cemented by this time - fixed camera shots and a moderate pace, some Straub-Huillet trademarks found such as the contemplation of the environment or the abrupt introduction of actors, via editing, such as a policeman who adds further hassle for the lead character.

Is it abstract? Not particularly, but in terms of cinema, Straub--Huillet are unique, not a duo to merely say filmed cinema the same way as other art house filmmakers despite many following their example, and to adapt Kafka even this "realistically" doesn't negate the curious nature of an adaptation of a novel by a man who never set foot in the US, and constructed it partially from his own neurosis. Befittingly its own patchwork of European cinema with these themes, Kafka in general meeting these distinct and political filmmakers understandably creates something idiosyncratic. Its definitely a gem from them that could be a good gateway feature too for audiences hesitant to try their cinema.

Abstract Spectrum: Minimalist

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

From http://deeperintomovies.net/journal/image11/classrelations1.jpg

Double Down (2005)

From https://horrornews.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/
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Director: Neil Breen

Screenplay: Neil Breen

Cast: Neil Breen as Aaron Brand; Laura Hale as Megan; Mike Brady as the Agent; Robert DiFrancesco as the Agent; Bonnie Carmalt as the Bride; George Kerr as the Old Man; Maynard Mahler as the Father; Rose Mahler as the Mother; Marry Taylor as the Senator; Alan Rogers as the Director of the FBI; Huel Washington as the Homeland Security Director; Bill Frid as the Director of the CIA

My first Neil Breen film: this would've been inevitable as Breen has grown in reputation since making this debut Double Down to today. Notably, hailing from Las Vegas, he's a fringe filmmaker and is held, not my opinion, as a new cult "so bad he's good director" like Ed Wood Jr. He's definitely a one-off, fascinating in that, as an architect who self funded his films until he also started using Kickstarter, he has been growing in his popularity as more people learn of him and see each new film. He's the personification of an outsider filmmaker if there ever was one.

I'll be honest though, whilst I softened on Double Down in hindsight, that the film is a frustrating and "bad" experience to have seen, especially in knowledge that this contains his trademarks to the current day, something I'll have to adapt to or perish from experience each time. The issue is complicated by the fact that a) he always casts himself as the perfect human being, here a super hacker and bio-weapon terrorist who cannot be touched in virtue and talent, and that b) his work is to promote his political ideas. Thankfully, he has ideals anyone could sympathise with; that we should be virtuous and noble, and he has an axe to grind with white collar crime and politics, but whenever he goes into long monologues he suddenly slips into the vague and rambling. Said film Double Down is also vague and rambling from the beginning.

To digest this is a piece, Breen is the ultimate person - he can hack anything, even has programmed a shield over him by satellite to protect himself, which paints an image of Breen having an ego before he apparently cures a young girl with a magic rock halfway through the film, which doesn't make sense in context either. He even possibly meets God, an old man who slips and lands head first on a rock and dies, but that's to be debated. To be honest, even this would be tolerable, the auteur who makes films he's the central star, if he backed it up with a creative imagination. He's not exactly Carmelo Bene, and whilst it's reminiscent of Wax or the Discovery of Television Among the Bees (1991) in the constant scenes of Breen wandering the desert, its neither that either. Least Breen has the bravery, in a symbolic scene naked face down in a pool, to reveal himself to the point you can actually make out his testicles whether that's a good thing or not.

From https://moviesshouldnotsuckdotcom.files.wordpress.com
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And he's definitely a poor man's Terence Malick, which is an honest-to-good comparison as it feels like Malick's later post-Tree of Life films in the constant introspective voiceover and a mix of stock footage and attempted symbolic imagery, which involves some dramatic scenes and a lot of Breen wandering the Nevada desert. Some bits are attempted artistry I admire the attempt at trying; as a character with depression and having lost his childhood sweetheart, he'll interact with his childhood self, or the childhood selves with replace them briefly in a shot. Then however there's many scenes of Neil Breen running around the desert shouting "Where are you?" which repeat constantly, or the sequence where he starts screaming like a mad man when, originally planning to shut down Las Vegas for a villainous group, he gets a crisis of faith when he reminds himself he loves being an American. The film even predates the Tree of Life's ending when Breen encounters his dead parents stood on a lake, which just adds to peculiar yet strangely potent comparisons between two American filmmakers with distinct obsessions.

The plot doesn't make sense even in terms of the lead character, Breen going out of his way to have his character donate his gains to charities for children and natural disaster victims, but the gains are from deal involving powdered anthrax in poorly duck taped packages to terrorists, and testing chemicals in lakes and killing the fish. The narration, which truly does evoke Malick in the retrospective and "poetic" dialogue, does descend into the paradoxical as the character goes through a series of vignettes and missions, from an assassination of a newly married couple involving a poisoned strawberry in a glass of champagne to more wandering about the desert. A lot of the film is just the curious life of this figure he plays, who can seemingly pull laptops from being any rock and power them without electricity, eating an amount of tuna I'd even bawk at for potential mercury poisoning, and keeping all the empty cans inexplicably stockpiled in the boot of his car. He also keeps waking up from nightmares on the ground near his car and apparently kept his late love's head in a sleeping bag all this time, but that's normal by his standards.

Double Down is frankly a chore, a fascinating one but one, however, which would be a struggle for most people to sit through. I wouldn't call the film abstract either as, whilst weird, it's such a rambling experience even when it tries to reach a dynamic plot change, where he makes a conference call to many powerful figures and starts stopping his major plan by many smaller ones which still kill people, all entirely depicted in stock footage. I never mentioned he had cybernetic implants, never of use plot wise barring stock footage of real surgery so scratched in the footage used it looks like a Faces of Death moment about to pop in. There's some production value, which has to be credited, seeing Las Vegas in the mid-2000s both production design and fascinating, and Breen is able to even borrow an expensive sports car for one scene so is a bar higher than other no/micro-budget filmmakers in what he can get his hand on.

He's however, someone who proudly says in the credits no one was on lighting, and stages scenes with himself in close-up entirely separate from almost the entirety of his cast, done many times and leading to long monologues about guerrilla warfare to hating white collar crime said but never felt. This'll not be the end for me with this director - because Neil Breen is a real one-off - but throughout this review, I am constantly reminded of the many reasons why it was also a struggle to sit through this film, Double Down a frustrating experience.

Abstract Spectrum: Nonsensical/Weird

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

From https://worstmoviesevermade.com/wp-content
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