While the last film of the day was simple filler, I had high expectations for the first two. Fresh from winning a Jury Award at the Rome film festival, Belgian comedy Kill Me Please possessed all the features of a sure thing: a pair of producers well known for their savvy takes on the black comedy, a plethora of talented character actors from all around, and a strong, timely premise concerning assisted suicide and its fast transformation into a simple commodity. As for The Whisperer in Darkness, it was a long-awaited adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's eponymous short story in which sentient flying fungi from outer space entrap the brains of a New England farmer in a metal cylinder meant to sustain space travel. Produced by the dead-serious H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society, following on their supremely interesting adaptation of Lovecraft's Call of Cthulhu, this new film is a similar homage to the twisted narratives of the American master and to the aesthetics of early American cinema. But contrary to the former film, which succeeded in depicting the incongruous angles from the lost city of R'lyeh with surprising perceptiveness, the present effort is rather ill-advised in its aesthetic research, amounting to a monochrome canvas highlighted by a few wondrous contraptions captured onscreen with the naivety of dated genre films. While the producers try their best to remain faithful to the source material, drawing from the original text almost word for word, they do so at the detriment of the art of filmmaking.
The first film being scheduled for 5:15 PM, I had to rush out of work in order to catch the rising curtains. And right after the screening, I had to rush again, dashing out of the De Sève theater like a mad man, crossing the underground tunnel to the Hall building in a crackling flash of light and narrowly missing the beginning of the second screening, scheduled for five minutes later. Luckily, the lengthy short film opening The Whisperer in Darkness gave me ample breathing room. Having caught the final moments thereof, I can also say that it wasn't something I regretted missing. It looked far too expensive for a short film and it was marred by a simplistic, predictable twist ending and a surprisingly classical approach to technique. Actually, it was the kind of effort that begs the question: "Why do they do it?" Why do they spend untold amounts of money in order to craft uninspired genre offerings with no chance of reaching beyond the festival circuit? And so, I enjoyed the last of Mandragore's credits, for they brought the promise of something truly wonderful, a rare foray into the opaque mind of my favorite horror author, H.P. Lovecraft!
Unfortunately, when The Whisperer in Darkness came to an end, I felt a huge void inside my soul, as if I had been robbed of something, of my innocence perhaps. After The Call of Cthulhu, I felt that there was room for some exciting, if a bit too literal feature adaptations of Lovecraft's indescribable short stories. But I was wrong. Dead wrong. And so I went into the last screening with a heavy heart, expecting very little from Adam Wingard's A Horrible Way to Die, even though I had loved Pop Skull way beyond my expectations. I didn't want to feel cheated again, and so I lowered my expectations, especially after the film was hailed as being "like a serial killer film made by Gus Van Sant". Fortunately, the tag didn't stick (the film was way too unpretentious), but I wasn't blown away either. And though I can't find major flaws to A Horrible Way to Die, except a total lack of photographic proficiency from the part of the director, I must say that it was a far cry from the former film, which used the indeterminacy of the hand-held camera to better delineate the indeterminacy of the protagonist.
FILMS SEEN
Kill Me Please
Irresistible black and white, but mostly black comedy about death as a luxurious commodity. The film opens with a depressed comedian interpreted by Benoit Poelvoorde who complains about delays in the process of his assisted suicide. "The curtain has fallen", he keeps repeating despite his doctor's advice concerning the myriad solutions for him to appreciate life. And so, he slashes his wrists instead of waiting a few more days for a glass of poison-laced water. Thus begins the chronicle of life in a secluded "suicide" clinic located in the Swiss Alps. Every tenant being more extravagant than the next, the film quickly moves from one hilarious scene to the next, digging deep to offer the viewer a carefully crafted air of indifference regarding every grave issue it can muster, contributing to a refreshing discourse about death and suicide as an absurd ideal, but also about life and how much lighter we should take it sometimes. But unfortunately for the talented ensemble cast assembled in the clinic, the surrounding villagers soon start taking an interest in the clinic's affairs, and they soon decide to take it upon themselves to precipitate its ongoing business... Zany fun ensues.
ENTHUSIASTIC THUMBS UP
The Whisperer in Darkness
Underwhelming, willingly conventional foray in the sacrosanct, opaque world of Lovecraft. Painstaking esthetic research and a faithful rendition of the master's words is nullified by the very uniqueness of the source material, which throws lingering shades of the Sin City syndrome all over a nonetheless righteous enterprise. Read full review here.
MELANCHOLY THUMBS DOWN
A Horrible Way to Die
Here is a film for which I harbor such mixed feelings that it becomes hard for me to label it as either good or bad, its mumblecore aesthetics being at once its greatest asset and its greatest flaw. In my eyes, the incredibly shaky camerawork and amateurish production values on display, both of which will certainly provoke a certain intestinal malaise in many older critics, simultaneously impair and heighten the film's efficiency, making the central love story between a recovering alcoholic and her serial killer boyfriend appear at once incredibly overreaching and refreshingly realistic. Director Adam Wingard's contention here is that serial killers are people just like you and me, and that they are stuck with the very same issues that we face everyday. And while such a contention tends to underplay the psychological subtleties necessary to create a truly realistic serial killer character, it also helps unbolt a lasting, and frankly disturbing myth concerning the god-like quality of such criminals, which are often revered as rock stars by mindless followers. In the end, it is the charismatic turn by talented indie sensation AJ Bowen as the serial killer which insures the film's likability as he seamlessly alternates between brutal misanthropy and genuine sweetness. Furthermore, while it is a peculiar, challenging film, A Horrible Way to Die perfectly displays the technical economy necessary to insure the sustainability of American genre cinema.
THUMBS UP
