Tusk (2014)

Title: Tusk (2014)

Director: Kevin Smith

Cast: Justin Long, Michael Parks, Johnny Depp, Haley Joel Osment

Personally, I don’t regard Kevin Smith as a “great director”. Now don’t get me wrong, I think the guy is awesome, I love how much he loves comics, and I have enjoyed many of his Askewniverse movies like Dogma (1999) and Chasing Amy (1997). In other words, I don’t despise Kevin Smith’s films 100% because sometimes they are great, problem is that sometimes, they are terrible. I went through a Kevin Smith phase (like anyone who was a film buff during the 90’s) where I loved his films, but recently I re-watched Mallrats (1995) and realized that it was beyond painful to watch, mainly because of its unnatural dialog and situations, none of which come off as believable. The whole film sounds and looks so staged, the dialog feels as if the actors were reading it off the page, something I personally hate on any movie. This last bit has always been my main problem with Kevin Smith movies, the fake sounding dialog. It’s not the lack of vocabulary, it’s the over abundance of it. In real life, people don’t talk like they know every word in the dictionary, especially not college drop outs or pot heads. Still, when Smith is on all cylinders, he sometimes makes what I can call a “good film”. Strangely enough, it’s those films that deviate from his ‘Askewniverse’ that I find to be the best in his repertoire.

Anybody see Smith’s anti-religious horror flick, Red State (2011)? Wowzers, there’s a diamond in the rough. It stirred me like no other Smith film had. Again, Red State is a film outside of the ‘Askewniverse’ series of films and by this I mean that it’s a film that doesn’t feature Jay and Silent Bob. Another example of a good Kevin Smith film is the endearing, Jersey Girl (2004) a film that loss its audience because it featured Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck together on screen after they had released the beyond awful Gigli (2003). Gigli was a fiasco of a movie. A film so bad, that anything that Affleck and Lopez did after that was affected by it, and Jersey Girl was victim number one. A pity because Jersey Girl is actually one of Kevin Smith’s best films, truly touching if you ask me. Hopefully, more people will discover it as time passes. So here comes Tusk, yet another film in which Smith works outside of his comfort zone. Tusk is not the kind of film you’d expect from Smith, a director who commonly works the comedy genre. Here Smith attempts yet again to make a straight forward horror film, a freak out, a movie that will possibly make you very, very uncomfortable. Did he succeed?

The answer to that question my dear readers is a resounding “yes!” How uncomfortable will Tusk make you? Well, I screened this one for a couple of my friends at my house, all of them cringed during the whole film, many of them said they couldn’t believe what they were watching and I had one walk out. Literally, one person simply couldn’t take the ideas presented on Smith’s Tusk and spent the duration of the film smoking cigarettes in my balcony, so that right there let’s you see the kind of film we’re talking about here. 99% of my friends couldn’t take their eyes off of the film because of how out there it was! And 1% walked out! What’s so crazy about this movie anyway? Well, I’ll give you  the back story behind the making of the film so you know what you’re getting yourself into. How this movie came about is Kevin Smith has this podcast called ‘Smodcast’ and during said show (go here to listen to it) the topic of discussion was this ad they found in the classifieds where this guy was offering free room and board to whoever would agree to dress up as a Walrus. They found the add so nuts, that they then made up a whole story about why this person would want somebody to dress up as a Walrus, and boom, the story for the movie was born. They then told their readers to type #Walrusyes if they wanted the film to be made or #Walrusno if they thought it was a bad idea. A huge amount of listeners thought it would be a phenomenal idea, fast forward a few months later, and Tusk was made.

Same as the premise of the hypothetical story made up during the podcast, the film is about this old man who puts up an ad in which he asks somebody to come and listen to his stories because he has a lot of them and he is lonely and wouldn’t mind some company. Justin Long’s character, a podcaster looking for crazy stories for his show decides that this is a good one, so he goes to the old man to listen to his stories. And that’s about as far as I want to go here because I don’t want to spoil this movie for anybody. Simply said, this movie just might freak you the hell out. It reminded me of various films; number one was Rob Reiner’s Misery (1990) because it’s that kind of story where an unsuspecting person falls into a trap, like a fly on a spider’s web. It’ll make you think twice before giving your confidence to someone you do not know. Secondly it reminded me of David Lynch’s Eraserhead (1977), because of the visual, the monster, the big reveal. And yes my friends, Tusk, in my book is a monster movie. Like a twisted version of Frankenstein mixed with Silence of the Lambs (1991) or something. It’s that crazy, it’s that eclectic. How much crazier can this movie get? Well, it stars Johnny Depp as this crazy, cross eyed, shot gun totting, French cop. Yeah, you read that right. Also, Johnny Depp’s daughter cameos as a convenience store clerk, in a scene with Kevin Smith’s daughter. Need more to convince you? Okay, Justin Long and Michael Sparks carry this movie on their shoulders and steal the show in the process.  

Final words on Tusk is that out of all of Kevin Smith movies, this is the one that’s shocked me the most, it’s the one that stirred the biggest reaction in me and that my friends is a good thing in my book. It’s a slow burner, but trust me, it will get under your skin, it will freak you the hell out, so be prepared for that! Best thing about the whole thing? It was so well written, it has none of that fake sounding Kevin Smith dialog we are accustomed to hearing on his movies, so I’m glad he’s taken note of this and corrected it in his films. Tusk has an amazing story attached to it, who would think such an interesting story would spawn from a podcast right? Much less a fake ad! That’s right my friends, the ad that inspired this movie was a prank from one of Smith’s many fans. As you can see, the story behind this movie gets crazier the deeper you dig, yet the resulting film was amazingly effective. There are a lot of horror movies out there whose main purpose is to shock the hell out of you; I’m talking about films like Taxidermia (2006), The Human Centipede (2009) and its sequels; most recently I saw V/H/S 2 (2013) and damn, that was a real shocker as well! These are movies that take their ideas to such ludicrous heights that you won’t believe what’s transpiring before your eyes, this is the kind of film that Tusk is, and I’m astonished that Tusk  came from Kevin Smith, but then again, he’d already showed us he had the ability to shock with Red State. Best part is that he is calling Tusk the first film in his ‘Canada Trilogy’, where all three films will be centered somehow around Canada. The following one is called Yoga Hosers (2015), a film about Yoga enthusiasts who team up with a man-hunter in order to fight ‘an ancient evil presence’ and that film will be followed by another called Moose Jaws (2016), which is described simply as “Jaws, but with a Moose”. In any case, I’m happy to see Smith playing with different themes and genres, whenever it happens, it’s fun and shocking for us as an audience. Of course, this isn’t stopping him from making Clerks III, a film that Kevin Smith is scripting as I type this. So anyhow, mark Tusk, as one of Kevin Smith’s good ones!  Seriously? One of the craziest movies I’ve ever seen.

Rating: 4 out of 5 

   

Red State (2011)

Title: Red State (2011)

Director: Kevin Smith

Cast: Michael Parks, John Goodman, Michael Angarano, Kyle Gallner

Review:

In the United States of America, the term ‘Red State’ is used to describe a state whose population leans more towards voting Republican, and in America Republican usually stands for Christian and conservative. Red State is a great title for Kevin Smith’s new film because it deals precisely with people who lean towards the extremely conservative side of things, which is as much of an extreme as extreme liberals. I’m always happiest living my life somewhere in between these two schools of thought; a happy medium where everyone is respected. Ultimately, I don’t lean towards any given group because I don’t like to ‘belong’ to anything and follow anybody but myself. To me we all see the world in our own different ways, and that’s fine. But as Red State helps us see, there are twisted ways of looking at this world. Not everyone believes in ‘live and let live’. Not everyone says ‘let’s co-exist’. Some say ‘kill those that don’t think like us…because the bible says so!’

In Red State we meet a trio of teenagers who are excited because they’ve just hooked up with some chick over the internet who says she wants to have sex with all three of them at the same time. So, off they go on their sexual escapades…too bad for them that it’s all part of a trap being set up by the members of the ‘Five Points Church’ to eradicate homosexuals from their community. You see to the Christians of this film, homosexuals are beasts, sick people with twisted desires. Some church going folks have no problems in expressing their hatred towards homosexuals. Ever seen the members of the ‘Westboro Baptist Church’ holding those “God Hates Fags” signs in their protests? Never mind that the bible teaches people to love your enemy, or love thy neighbor,  that part of the scripture is ignored when gay people come into play. In Red State we meet a group of gay hating Christians who gather the ‘sinners’ and kill them systematically. Will the three sexually adventurous teens escape the religious cult with their lives?

So basically, this is one risky movie for Kevin Smith to make and I applaud him for making it because when you decide to analyze religion and preachers and cults, well, movie studios tend to back away from producing films like that. You know how studios are when it comes to religion and politics, they hate referencing these themes because they know it will alienate a large part of the audience. Filmmakers that try to address these themes (however important they may be to express) always have problems when it comes to getting their ideas produced. Just look at Paul Thomas Anderson, an amazing director, a true talent that makes amazing films, yet the latest film he is trying to get made called ‘The Master’ has faced all kinds of problems. Why? Because it’s about religion, that’s why. With Red State, Kevin Smith wanted to say his bit about religion, he knew he couldn’t spend a lot of money on a film that was presenting an unpopular idea, so he went and made it for a mere 4 million dollars which is loose change when it comes to making a film. But still, a film that’s this ‘in your face’ about exposing the many faults of religion, well, you have to be ready for a bit of a backlash.

These are real people on the above pics by the way. 

And so, same as with Kevin Smith’s Dogma (199) people protested. Most of the protesters came from the churches that felt were being referenced in the film, like the Westboro Baptist Church for example. What they didn’t expect was for Kevin Smith to pull his own comedic counter protest! But this kind of backlash is expected with a film such as this; after all Smith is talking about real events and real people. For example, some of the events that take place in Red State are entirely based on the events that happened in real life with David Koresh and his ‘Branch Davidian’ sect; a sect that masqueraded as servants of God, started to arm themselves with all sorts of guns. In the end, the Branch Davidians ended up going up against the U.S. government themselves. Of course, they lost the battle; a small group of people going up against the all powerful U.S. government is never a good idea. And so, the Davidian church was burned to the ground, with all its followers inside, including women and children. Depending on whom you believe, either they burned themselves down in mass suicide, or the government saw them as too much of a threat to society and burned them all down. After seeing the documentary Waco: The Rules of Engagement (1997), I lean towards the idea that it was the government themselves who made this sect disappear because they were deemed too dangerous and out of control. This is basically, the same type of scenario that we see in Smith’s Red State, a showdown between the government, and a crazy cult.

 A similar situation also happened with Jim Jones and his “Peoples Temple”. This guy created his own society as well, with his own rules and regulations. What helped Jim Jones’s cult grow was that he used the bibles teachings to back up his craziness. People saw him as a man of god, because he preached on! He was to lead them to “paradise” so he created his own community where he was king. The result was the death of more than 900 men,  women and children who literally “drank the Kool-Aid” and killed themselves because their religious leader told them to. If you want more information on this terrible story, check out the fascinating documentary called Jonestown: The Life and Death of the Peoples Temple (2006). That documentary is a real experience to watch, I dare you not to cry while watching it. What happened in ‘Jonestown’ is also a similar scenario than the one seen in Red State; a crazed religious leader with a God Complex who decides to build his own society and his own reality. Unfortunately, the government doesn’t appreciate this type of thing very much; especially when you put the life of others in danger because of your beliefs. The point this film is trying to make is, you may believe whatever you want, but when you put the life of innocent people in danger, then your going to get wiped out, because then your going against the law.

Red State reminded me of all these horrifying real life events, but it also felt like Kevin Smith’s answer to Martyrs (2008), an incredible movie that addresses many of the same issues and situations as Red State did. True, Martyrs is a far superior picture, but this is not to put Smith’s film down. In fact I would dare say that Red State is one of Kevin Smith’s best films to date. The dialog and situations actually feel a whole lot more real than any of Smith’s other films, which usually have very wooden and refined dialog; so refined that it doesn’t come off as natural. On Red State everything just flows more naturally and realistically. I have to commend Michael Parks for his portrayal of the religious leader in the film, and kudos to Smith for writing such an amazing dialog for his character, there is a scene where Parks has this incredible monologue that says many truths about religion and the bible. The truths spoken in this dialog simply can’t be denied, by anybody, which is probably what irritates so many people, so much. Smith obviously did his research when it came to writing the script because the dynamics between the religious leader and his group is extremely accurate and realistic. 

        

Sadly, a film of this nature, a film that’s so truthful about so many things gets flamed because its basically saying that the product of faith are crazy loons like Reverend Abin Cooper and his followers. But the truth is that in many cases, this has been absolutely true. Okay, so not everybody who reads the bible and goes to church will turn into a gun totting crazy person, that’s true. But some do. The real problem is that the bible gives the tools necessary to pull these types of crazy things off, because the bible does teach some truly questionable things! I’ve personally heard Christians say that yes, they would kill their son or daughter if god told them too, just like he told Abraham to. How crazy is that? In the film, Reverend Abin Cooper quotes the bible directly on many occasions, and then says “This is scripture!” and then he repeats it: “This is scripture!” as if to make the point clear, as if saying “I know this sounds extreme, but this is the bible I’m quoting here and don’t you dare defy it!” True, many of the things taught in the bible defy logic and moral, yet unfortunately, since its “the word of god” it gives the perfect excuse to any  loon out there to do them and say they were doing ‘gods will’. Kevin Smith and his new film had the guts to say this, unfortunately, the world is so programmed by religion that they uniformly rejected Smith’s film. Even if it’s a good one. Im not just saying Red State is good because I agree with it’s message, I’m saying its good because it really is. It has some really great tense moments. Its got one twist after another. It’s incredibly engaging. But even though Red State is actually good, the expected barrage of bad press came, and to be honest, the bad press doesn’t even feel truthful or objective; it just feels like they say these bad things about the film simply to get everyone to distance themselves from a film that might help them see religion and the bible differently. Red State ended up being too controversial for even a proper theatrical release; instead it went straight to DVD. Not because it’s a bad movie (because it isn’t) not because it sucks, but because what is saying is deemed too dangerous to air on such a mass medium as movie theaters. This shouldn’t surprise anyone now should it? After all, the truth is rarely popular thing in this world.

Rating:  5 out of 5