Hey, everyone. “Moriarty” here.
If you count my top ten of 2007 list, I’ve got no less than nine reviews due at the moment. I’m chained to my desk from now until I finish these nine articles, even as I post Sundance pieces and other things that come into the inbox. Maybe it’s good that I’ve got this many things to write about. I won’t have a chance to overthink each one of them, and I won’t be inclined to overwrite every review. I just want to get right to it, and I’m going to start this rampage of reviews with my take on Mitchell Lichtenstein’s TEETH, a buzz hit from last year’s Sundance that is just now getting a platform release in theaters around the country. Capone interviewed the director earlier this weekend, and we’ve been running reviews sporadically for the last year as people have seen it. I’m certainly not the first person to weigh in on this, so what, if anything, do I have to add to the conversation about it?
First, I think the comparisons to early David Cronenberg are apt, and I don’t say that lightly. Early David Cronenberg films are among my favorite horror movies, and I think there’s a brilliant diseased energy to that early work that very few horror filmmakers have ever approached in their films. Most horror is, honestly, all about the visceral and not really about the cerebral. If a filmmaker can get a cheap jump scare out of you, that’s somehow more valued in the marketplace than the guy who can make you want to take a shower after the film. Cheap sensation is easier to sell and easier to make. I admire what Lichtenstein tried to do with this movie, and if I don’t think it’s 100% successful, it doesn’t matter. TEETH is worth seeing, especially for anyone who really believes in horror as art. This is akin to something like Neil Jordan’s THE COMPANY OF WOLVES, a dreamy fairy-tale take on superhero tropes, horror by virtue of extreme imagery, but more feminist fable than anything else.
Jess Wexler plays Dawn, a girl who deals with her own budding sexuality by becoming an activist in the purity movement. She is part of a group that makes a pledge to engage in no sexual activity before marriage. Of course, most of the boys in the group are there to see if they can make the girls break that promise. And of course, most of the girls in the group love that push-pull of no-we-can’t/yes-we-can. That’s the game. It’s what gets them hot. And Lichtenstein gives the film a sort of overripe sweaty sexuality that works well as it builds towards what you know is coming. The cold opening, introducing little-kid-versions of Dawn and her step-brother Brad (played as an adult by the always-visually-disturbing John Hensley), is like the origin story in a comic book. It’s quick, tells you everything you need to know, and it sets up a feeling of mounting dread for the rest of the film.
Dawn’s serious about her purity pledge. She really doesn’t want to have sex with anyone until she gets married. Part of that is because of her own fears of her genitalia. She knows how she’s built. What she doesn’t know is that she’s unique. She talks at a purity meeting about how she has a gift that is worth protecting, but she has no idea what she’s really saying. Like with any good fairy tale or superhero story, this is really about the process of gaining control of the gifts you’ve been given, and the way Wexler plays Dawn, you believe not only her decency, but also the desperation behind it. Her purity pledge is also a reaction to the way Brad’s matured into a deviant, a blatant scumbag who flaunts his own seedy sexuality in front of his whole family. Hensley is making a fascinating career for himself out of playing really vile human beings between this and his ongoing role on NIP/TUCK as Matt, troubled son to the two main characters. Here, he’s eaten up by his own diseased feelings toward his step-sister, and that tension between them is a major part of the movie’s dynamic.
I love how the film never tries to explain how Dawn’s mutation took place. There are nuclear cooling towers that stand above the small town all the time, and Lichtenstein seems happy to let us draw our own conclusions from the imagery. In the end, it’s not important why Dawn exists the way she does... what’s important is what she does with what she is.
The closest comparison I can make to another film is CARRIE. They’re not structured the same at all -- can you imagine what a rampage at prom would look like in this film? -- but both deal with someone grappling with their own destructive capabilities and eventually embracing them. I think it’s tricky, turning the premise of TEETH into anything but a joke... a vagina with teeth in it that reflexively bites off anything that’s pushed into it. And there are a few moments that are Troma-level sleaze, total shock effect that I would imagine absolutely destroy in a packed theater. I don’t think it’s a spoiler to warn you that you will see dicks. Plural. And they will be cut off. And you will see it. And, yes, it’s as awful as you think it is. Dawn’s reaction to each of the incidents is where I think Wexler’s performance really shines. The evolution of how she handles it is quite striking, and by the end of the film, it’s hard to believe she’s the same girl we see at that first purity meeting.
The film looks like a very small budget film, and anyone who goes in expecting a conventional horror film is going to feel sadly misled, but TEETH is a film of considerable merit, and it’s promising for both this young cast and the writer/director.
I’ll have more of these tardy reviews trickling in over the next few days. I took my wife to see CLOVERFIELD tonight so I could look at a few things a second time before writing my review. It’s been that sort of week. I sat through one movie three times last week, and it’s not a film I was particularly crazy about, either. I digress, though... I’ve got to get back to work on the 2007 list and post a few more of these Sundance reviews coming in...
Drew McWeeny, Los Angeles
Drew McWeeny, Los Angeles
