Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with MiraJeff on a couple of the midnight flicks outta Tribeca. I saw REEKER at SXSW last March and I think ol' MiraJeff is far, far too kind on the film. It's well shot, I'll give it that... But the monster is dime-store Halloween Mask stuff and the characters are hard to stomach, even if there is a good amount of gore. That's my opinion at least. MiraJeff liked it a lot more than I did. He also reviews LONG DISTANCE, another horror movie that sounds like it has a great set-up, but might fall flat... Of course, it's starring Monica Keena, who uttered the craptastic "Freddy versus Jason... Place your bets!" line, so... Here's MiraJeff!
Once again, it is I, the talented Mr. MiraJeff again, with a couple more reviews from the Tribeca Film Festival’s Midnight section. Now that the festival has ended, I’ve had some time to breathe a little, so I’ll be sending in nearly a dozen reviews within the next week or so. But for now, my revered audience, on with the show.
REEKER
The best thing about Reeker was its opening five minutes, which were a chilling and thrilling sign of things to come. The exaggerated gore is on a level all its own in this opening sequence, about a darling family who pull over for a bathroom break on the wrong strip of desert highway. Having successfully achieved its goal to freak the fuck out of you, the film quickly introduces us to its five sacrificial lambs. Trip is a slacker goofball who steals a stash of ecstasy pills from Radford, (Eric Mabius, who oddly enough warrants his own …And Eric Mabius opening credit now) a psychopath rumored to have lost his medical license for fucking a hot cadaver that he killed. Like any paranoid dealer, Radford has cameras set up all over his pad so when he discovers Trip has ripped him off, he sets out to follow him on his spring break adventures and act as our questionable red herring. Joining Trip on his feel-good journey are Cookie, the hot slutty one, Gretchen, the tough chick with a knack for survival, Nelson, Trip’s horny sidekick, and Jack, the independent blind optimist. Michael Ironside also co-stars as a man intent on finding his missing wife, who knows more than he lets on.
The standout performance of this bunch, if horror movies are allowed to have those, is delivered by Devon Gummersall as Jack. Jack is the type of blind guy who likes to sneak up on people, even though technically he can’t sneak up on anyone since they can see him and he can’t see anything except for a smidgeon of light that proves useful in the film’s grand finale. Gummersall, who starred as Brian Krakow on My So Called Life, infuses Jack with a sense of humor that keeps his character from being another fumbling-in-the-dark blind guy.
Despite some cliché characters, Reeker is original in its attempts to incorporate the sense of smell to the horror genre. The sense of smell, according to the film, is the first sense we acquire after birth, and the last one we have before death. The other unique thing about Reeker is director Dave Payne’s refreshing approach toward visualizing the sense of smell. Reeker is a monster movie, so when the Reeker appears or is nearby, the onscreen images become distorted, as if you were looking at them while sitting in front of a campfire, and the special effect spreads on the big screen like a virus.
Reeker is not for the squeamish. Half-people drag their bloody torso stumps across the desert as if they were bales of hay blowing past the frame in old Westerns. The Reeker is a fan of power tools, and we are treated to a litany of drills to the head, disemboweling metal devices that spin and slice through human intestines like butter, mangled dogs, slashed mouths, and missing tongues. The Reeker monster clearly symbolizes the Grim Reaper, and when one character laments he can smell something wrong in the air, it is obvious he smells Death, with a capital D. This is made clear when the Reeker seems to collect the memories of his victims, as the characters have their lives flash before their eyes before they die, though this was not explained until a Q+A session with the director after the screening.
Reeker does its best to maintain its original flair but horror movies inevitably borrow from the classics that have come before them, and Reeker is no different. The setting is very Psycho-like, with the ill-fated teenagers trying to run from their tragic fates at the Halfway Motel, only to realize they are stuck in the middle of nowhere. The roll of toilet paper spinning into oblivion after Cookie’s outhouse scene, and a few other terror-ific moments also reminded me of A Nightmare on Elm Street. Reeker seems aware of the classic bogeymen that have come before it, drawing on those influences to create a new brand of fear, though the script does veer off into Final Destination territory with clunky dialogue about Death coming for them and how you can’t have a plan to cheat death. The Reeker itself looked decidedly Crypt Keeper-ish, with a face only a mother could love, just like that other slasher, Jason Voorhees. Payne also mentioned that he was specifically influenced by Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead, and classic John Carpenter movies.
Not a bad list, if you ask me, but I’m sure you’re all waiting for a closing line like, “Reeker stinks,” or something like that. Well, too bad, it’s not going to happen. By the time the lights came up and its twists were revealed, save for some head-scratching questions, Reeker was a good schlock picture and a fun, scary time at the movies, especially if you go into the theater reeking of something yourself. Not that I condone that. Grade: B
LONG DISTANCE
Let me preface this review by saying that Long Distance is a movie I was very excited about heading into it. I had to finagle my way into a screening, which proved less difficult once I told a publicist who I was and that I was with AICN. The film had built up a lot of festival buzz, the screening was crowded, and the premise sounded cool enough; A girl dials a wrong number and hears a murder on the other end of the phone. The psychopath then keeps calling her back so she can listen to his cross-country killing spree as he makes his way closer to her area code. I was really hoping this film would succeed. Unfortunately, Long Distance is how far away you should stay from this movie. It’s a trite, one-note, not scary horror movie with a lame twist that negates everything that’s preceded it. The film begins with some blood spattered bed sheets, the only interesting visual we get for the next half-hour or so as the dawdling, unoriginal script sets up its inane plot and characters we could care less about.
Monica Keena (Dawson’s Creek) stars as Nicole Freeman, an emotionally fragile Boston psych student fresh out of a long-term relationship, suffering from a broken heart. To simulate her character’s fear and anxiety, Keena nervously shakes her leg from time to time, showing off her “range.” Is this what acting has come to? She looks so conscious of her body movements that you can just picture in your head the following scenario. [Monica receives the script. The script calls for her leg to bounce uncontrollably. Monica practices this involuntary movement for weeks. She tries, faster, slower, medium, until one of her incorrect friends tell her, “There, you got it, Mon.”] Ugh, just terrible. Don’t get me wrong, I loved her delicious turn as teen-queen bitch Abby Morgan on Dawson’s Creek, but it appears she got this part because her nipples seem to be in a permanent state of arousal. I mean, I know it was an independent film but couldn’t the producers afford heat? The film was made for roughly 3 million dollars but I have no idea where it went to. There are no big stars, no expensive set pieces. The bulk of the film is just a girl on the phone, in her apartment.
Things pretend to pick up when a Boston Police detective, Frank (Ivan Martin), shows up to interrogate her after a murder victim’s phone records show 3 calls to her apartment. The script calls for the two of them to hit it off, but these two actors have as much chemistry as a middle school in July. This isn’t Keena’s fault, considering she’s acting opposite the least charismatic Boston detective ever put on screen. Would it kill this guy to smile, at least once? Frank sets up a trace on her phone and it becomes Nicole’s job to keep the killer on the line and talk to him, so the police can nab him exiting his latest crime scene. Nicole tries apologizing to psychopath for disturbing him, but the guy is already clearly disturbed. Fed up with his sick sense of humanity and urges him to get help, but he turns the tables and says, “No, you do,” before hanging up. When she calls back after *69ing him, a woman picks up, and Nicole tries to warn her before it is too late. Eventually, a callous FBI agent (Tamara Davis, way out of place) takes over the investigation, blows surveillance, and cues the movie to start falling apart. Long Distance then goes through the motions until its uninspired climax that is completely ridiculous and treats its audience like idiots, which we are, for thinking this film was going to hold anything new in store, or be decent at all.
In a Q+A after the film, I asked the director, Marcus Stern, what films he was inspired by and he totally sidestepped the question. He didn’t mention “Dial M For Murder,” “Scream,” “When a Stranger Calls,” etc. It seemed like he didn’t answer not because he didn’t want to reveal his inspirations, but because he wasn’t aware of what films Long Distance blatantly rips off. I’d be surprised if the guy had ever even seen When a Stranger Calls. Imagine having all this money to go and make a movie and not even knowing the forefathers of the genre. The director comes from the theater, which is no surprise, as Long Distance does little to show off his craft of filmmaking. The one visual that got my attention is in the shots of Nicole riding the elevator to turn on her building’s circuit breakers, which for no apparent reason, keep blowing. The way he frames these brief scenes, with the red arrow looming over her head, felt very claustrophobic, and there was a sense of dread, a feeling of vulnerability in which anything could happen to her.
I don’t want to bash this film and its hack director anymore, because hey, it’s his first time out of the gate, and we all make mistakes. I’m not saying I could’ve done a better job myself. It’s hard to pinpoint where this movie went wrong, but as it is now, Long Distance is standard B-movie fare. Stern has taken an idea full of potential and somehow botched its execution so badly, maybe he needs to be executed. That’s a bit harsh, I admit, but then again, maybe the filmmakers shouldn’t have taken the easy way out and had the balls to make a movie that takes some risks. Grade: D
That’s all for now, gang. I’ll be back with more Midnight Madness, including Shutter, Premonition, and Nightwatch, as well as reviews of Special Thanks to Roy London, Up For Grabs, Unleashed, Layer Cake, and Crash. Until then, this is MiraJeff, out.
