Not unlike The Human Centipede: First Sequence (which I reviewed here), Header is an average film reaching for the stars thanks to some seriously ill-deserved hype focusing on its central, oddball gimmick. Here, the shocking, but eventually tiresome repetition of "headers" barely manages to elevate the film's anemic story of a young Fed entangled in a web of corruption and murder to the treshold of cult-ish exploitation cinema. But what enthusiastic reviewers won't tell you is just how peripheral this shock gimmick is to the main plot, and how comically it actually translates onscreen. Personnally, I was appalled to realize that half of the positive reviews on the film cover came from people who had actually played in the film, including the author of the book (!), Edward Lee, and fellow splatterpunk writer, Jack Ketchum. Now, maybe you're stoked to discover Ketchum and Lee's involvment, and maybe you should be, considering their prominence in the field of splatter, but lemme tell you: it's all a trap! For instance, you shouldn't trust these words used by Lee to describe the film: "Brilliantly macabre", neither should you trust Ketchum when he says it is "tense and brutal as hell". You shouldn't trust the image shown on the DVD cover from the Synapse Films release either. Coupled with all the undeserving hype, these elements are meant to mislead you into believing that Header is more than what it is. But you, sophisticated gorehounds from around the world, know better than to fall into a trap with such a blatant mecanism.
Meet grandpap Martin, the nicest of all horror movie patriarchs.The film opens with a short flashback that hazily sets up the story of old boy Travis Clyde Tuckton, whose family seems to embrace rather strange traditions of murder, whose nature is left very unclear at that point. Fast-forward 11 years, when we are introduced to the film's actual protagonist, young federal agent Stewart Cummings, whose girlfriend is stricken with an illness so costly that he has to extract protection money from local peddlers to complement his salary. Then, we are re-acquainted with Tuckton who is now leaving jail after serving a rather lenghty sentence for involontary manslaughter. Knowing both his parents dead, he decides to return to his moonshine-peddling, shoemaking "grandpap" out in the woods. From then on, it is not long before the pair of rednecks becomes a duo of comical anti-heros, whose strange antics soon overshadow the main plot concerning agent Cummings' plight to generate more and more money for his sick girlfriend. You see, Travis and grandpap are eager to reinstate the old family tradition of "the header". And when they do, bodies start piling up, bodies with nasty head wounds. When these bodies attract the attention of agent Cummings, the fate of the three men become entangled, but only superficially so. And in the end, the main selling point of the film, "the header" is revealed as no more than one aspect of life in the backwoods, which is chronicled here with dry humor, clumsy visual effects, but an ultimately naturalist approach that greatly undermines the potential for horror that the film could've had.
What's a header? I really should tell you, as it is rather matter-of-factly described very early in the film. The header is the ultimate form of vendetta in the West Virginian redneck culture. It is something you do to one-up someone who has offended you beyond reparation. "It's just something that folks around here do", calmly explains the head Fed to young agent Cummings when he insists for an answer to the crucial question of "What's a header?". The act itself consists of fucking the brains of the recently murdered. You first have to make a large hole in the skull using a power drill (and not a hammer, as you might end up with "bone splinters in your pecker"), then slice the edge of the brain open with a sharp blade and insert your erect penis, thrust and repeat until the brain is soaked in sticky man-juice. Healthy variations include pissing in the brains or holding up your legless "grandpap" next to the hole and have him fuck them as well. The problem here is not how disgusting this whole process is to conceive, or to watch, but rather how mundanely it is evoked and shown. It is actually done in such a way as to totally nullify its impact by making it appear as a common practice. It is as if someone planned for you to be shocked by corruption in the political arena and was somehow convinced that you would be. That's how naive many reviewers are, saying the film is shocking and disturbing, while it is actually only chronicling a slice of life from the joyous existence of Virginian old boys (or so we're supposed to believe).
The fact that the overly exposed redneck murderers actually appear sympathetic to us, with their colorful expressions and joyous outlook on life, is also detrimental to the sense of horror one could derive from this film. Seeing how this here is a pair of likeable simpletons, eliminating people whom they truly seem to believe have offended them, it's hard to even shiver at their actions. This is just things being what they are, in a very twisted world sure, but a world realistically contained in age-old traditions of murder and revenge. The tiresome repetition of headers make it appear all the more casual and mundane, which furthmore undermines the film's potential for true horror. Then, there is the fact that the victims actually die before being brain-raped, which is fallaciously contradicted by the DVD cover image depicting a screaming head held like butt cheeks during doggy-style sex. So, the humiliation is done post-mortem, which should be a small consolation for some of the more wildly imaginative audience members, but a great let-down for fans of torture. In the end, the whole thing about headers is a worthy, but eventually futile exercise in button-pushing, especially considering the director's lack of proficiency for either atmosphere or tension-building. Obviously, one could argue that this weird tradition represents a worthy cultural anchor with which to initiate city-slicker Cummings to his new surroundings, and that would be true, especially if you consider the ending of the film. However, the lightness of tone that permeates the film, illuminating the murder scenes with a happy-go-lucky glow, actually prevents us from questioning the dubious morality of the rednecks and thus the film's tone tends to ruin what is essentially a fine, reflexive screenplay adapted from Edward Lee's novella by Michael Kennedy. Header is ultimately a self-defeating film because it fails to embrace a definite point of view on the material at hand. It would've worked best as a psycho-sociological study, but a serious lack of depth and overwhelming, but never realized, desire to gross-out the audience prevents it. As a shock, gross-out film, whatever most people will call it, it fails because it doesn't show enough. Not in my book anyway. I reckon that other blasés gore fans will feel the same. Finally, Header also fails as a horror film because it contains not a trace of terror.
False advertizing! Please don't spend the entire film, as I did,hoping to see a live header. The thing is simply impossible.
From a technical standpoint, the film is amateurish at best and that's what causes its downfall. Shot in the state of New York, using a DV camera, it manages to wow us mostly with its gorgeous woody settings, which are completely subservient to the action and almost always shot during daytime, which further prevents the setting of an appropriate mood. The filmmakers seem to make it a point to cram as many slow-mo shots and dramatic blurs as possible during the most intense scenes, which hinders the mostly down-to-earth, realistic stance taken early on. The head-rape scenes are conveyed in uncompromising details (no actual or simulated penetration shots, but explicit shots of head drilling and brain slicing) but to no avail, since these scenes are approached in such a light-hearted manner as to make them almost fun to watch. The grotesque is thus drowned in the mundane and all effect is lost.
At this point, I would like to compare Header to the quintessential city vs country horror film, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974). First of all, you have to believe that the comparaison is not unfair. Both films use the very same premise in a bid to terrorize the audience: crazy rednecks with murderous family traditions. Both films are super-low budget. Believe me, if Hooper and Henkel could've shot on DV, they would've! The main difference between the two films lies in execution. Whereas Hooper could improve boring shots of bone sculptures with oppressively angled framings and screeching noise, whereas he could muster one, if not the single greatest scene in horror cinema using close-ups of eyeballs, some makeup, a bunch of sinister-looking yokels, a hammer and a metal bucket through expressive framing and editing, Flancranstin struggles to use some vastly superior FX to his advantage, choosing instead of terror, the lesser avenue of shock. One could argue that he's done so knowing his limitations, which is fine. But the fact remains that he can't direct a horror scene to save his life. To his defense, I must say that the material he had to shoot was quite touchy. First, the pornographic nature of the crimes mostly prevents the use of close-ups, which totally hinders the effectiveness of the scenes containing headers. Then, there is the crucial fact that the victims are dead during the worst part of their ordeal. So you can forget about close-ups of panicked eyeballs, screams or pain. You are thus left with boring ragdolls being punished for the sins of their fathers. The success of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) stems first from Hooper's knack for mood-building, but also from the alien nature of the villains, two things that Header lacks. By over-exposing the villains and under-exposing the victims, the latter film has completely shot itself in the foot.
It's a shame, too, since the screenplay isn't all that bad and the actors are sufficiently convincing in their roles. The ending nicely ties the two narrative strands together while providing some rare food for thought. The main problem is that those two narrative strands actually compete for our attention, with the largely overdetermined story of the corrupt Fed lagging behind the evolving, more highly dramatic story of the header-giving rednecks. Unfortunately, the plot involving Tuckton and family is tragically cut short to fit the needs of the wider narrative, which is actually narrower in scope. That said, having us sympathizing with the rednecks is a fatal mistake in a bid for horror as we should rather wish for less screentime for them and a more dire end. While watching Header, and considering all that talk about power drills and brain-fucking, I couldn't help but think of Australian slasher The Loved Ones, a slightly more conventional horror film that also features brain-invasion. Believe me, the comparison did not favor Header. In my opinion, The Loved Ones is not only vastly superior, but also much nastier. Why? Because in it, the drill is held by a despicable bitch and it goes into a sympathetic victim's head. And that's all there is to it. You cannot be terrorized by the mundane actions of anti-heroes. You can only be grossed-out. If only for that, I suggest you watch Two Girls, One Cup or Pink Flamingos instead because Header is fucking boring!
2/5 Amateurish and self-defeating, Header ruins a nice screenplay with boring imagery that will unlikely shock or horrify genre fans.
