Ahoy, squirts! Quint here, holding up surprisingly strong after only 2 ½ hours of sleep last night, but then again the day has only really just begun. This morning I interviewed Jason Blum and hauled ass over to the Paramount to catch A Brave Heart: The Lizzie Velasquez Story (it's great and I'll review it as soon as I can). Now I've been able to carve out some time before my next screening and even better I found a comfy seat at Gourdough's Pub downtown that has delicious food and wifi. Basically what I'm saying is I'm in a good place right now.
While I still have some wifi and a waitress not eager to boot me out of my seat, I'm gonna attempt to put some words down about horror comedy The Final Girls, which premiered at the fest last night.
The first thing you'll notice about The Final Girls is its incredible cast, led by Taissa Farmiga and Malin Akerman. It's a great “I know that face” movie. The main cast is Farmiga, Akerman and Silicon Valley's Thomas Middleditch, Workaholics' Adam DeVine, Arrested Development's Alia Shawkat, Hunger Games and Vikings' Alexander Ludwig and Vampire Diaries (and more importantly Perks of Being a Wallflower)'s Nina Dobrev.
Now that you know the players, let's talk about the story. Taissa Farmiga plays Max, the daughter of a struggling actress, played by Malin Akerman. Akerman's big claim to fame was a supporting role in a cult classic '80s slasher film and she hasn't been able to shake the schlock work she started in. We only get a few moments to see Akerman and Farmiga interact with each other, but it's clear they have a strong bond.
That bond is broken when a car accident claims Akerman's character's life. But Max will have a chance to see her mother again... except not in a way she might expect.
There comes a point in the story when Max and her friends are pulled into the world of the '80s camp slasher her mom appeared in. Basically, The Final Girls is Scream mixed with Last Action Hero. People who know film conventions are now in a slasher film... In fact, it's a slasher film they know inside and out. Middleditch is the Randy of the movie. He's obsessed about genre, but this movie in particular is his favorite and now he's not only in the world, he gets to interact with all these characters.
That's one of the film's most interesting dynamics. Are characters on the page or on the screen just moments captured in time or are storytellers Gods in their own way? There's no doubt that film characters become something far greater than the actor who played them, the costume designer who dressed them, the cinematographer who lit them, the director who shaped the performance and the editor who pieced it together. That's part of the magic of the movies, but what are the limits of that?
If you subscribe to the infinite parallel universe theory then it's not all that outlandish to suggest that fictional characters are real people in their own world. Hell, we could all be living out a story written by some higher being than us. If you believe in destiny then you already believe in that concept at some fundamental level.
However most of the above are questions I was asking in response to the movie's main conceit, not something the movie was actively trying to get me to think about. At least not directly. The main thrust of the film is to entertain and spoof genre cliches. One of my issues with the movie, though, is that all the genre cliches it's torching have been torched a few dozen times already and aren't really conventions anymore.
I'm sure director Todd Strauss-Schulson and writers M.A. Fortin and Joshua John Miller truly love the slasher genre, but the movie makes it all a joke. Which is fine, but it's more of a Grindhouse trailer version of a slasher movie than a real, deep understanding of it. A “hey, aren't these movies so shitty and funny because they're awful” take, which grates on me a little. That's the reason of all the Grindhouse trailers I loved Edgar Wright's Don't the most because it is an exaggeration of a sub-genre of horror, but actually looks and feels like it would respectfully stand shoulder to shoulder with movies like The Legend of Hell House instead of point and laugh as it walks by.
Another big problem is that Strauss-Schulson's direction feels very needy. He uses the camera to show off that he's directing it and getting a cool shot rather than use it to visually tell the story. The movie finds into its groove when he's not trying to make sure we all know that a director's hand is at play and he lets the characters propel the story forward.
All that aside, I think the overall movie comes out looking pretty good, thanks primarily to its insanely charming cast and a genuinely touching mother/daughter story at its center. Seriously, this is the best Akerman has ever been and really shows off her range since she gets to play the real woman and her airy young '80s counterpart.
Farmiga is also great. She lends a crucial realism to the movie when it goes full blown fantasy and her emotional story to save her mother from the machete wielding masked killer is actually quite touching.
Another positive is the movie doesn't waste Alia Shawkat!
The movie thinks it's a tad bit smarter and more original than it is, but at the end of the day it's got more than enough charm, emotion and humor to win me over.
Alright, gonna jump into my next movie. Check back for more reviews and interviews as SXSW marches on!
-Eric Vespe
”Quint”
quint@aintitcool.com
Follow Me On Twitter
