SEND TO MOBILE PHONE
Unrated
Directed by Alec Tuckman
Review by Dr. Royce Clemens
One of the mixed blessings of being a critic at an internet horror site is that we get screeners of upcoming stuff. Movies going straight to video or trying to find distribution. It’s like we get practice swings from guys who will scare the living shit out of us in the future. I have seen beyond the crest of the wave to what the future holds, and I see…
…A bunch of fucking pussies.
Allow me to explain. Being as well-known critic David Edelstein got to coin the term “torture porn,” I myself should coin a term of my own. Horror films are suffering and will CONTINUE to suffer from a malady I call… “Myspace Horror.”
Much like Myspace has ruined stand-up comedy by bringing into power super-ironic, unfunny twits who would rather club a baby seal than tell a joke, (cough-cough-Dane Cook-cough) horror is suffering from a glut of filmmakers who would rather be cute and impress you with how many other horror movies they’ve seen than scare you or wrap you up in suspense. Don’t get me wrong. Some Myspace Horror Movies are actually good. STUPID TEENAGERS MUST DIE! was fun and BIT PARTS deserves a place in Guilty Pleasure Land. But most of them look like DELIVERY, which I wouldn’t let sniff my scrote if it paid me fifty bucks.
Where’s the excitement? Where’s the danger? Where’s the sense of experimentation inherent in ANY form of art? Horror movies are supposed to make parents usher their kids into Church pews while screaming “THOSE DAMN THINGS WILL SEND YOU STRAIGHT TO HELL!” And they REALLY WILL, if the directors make them right!
Which is why it is my privilege to tell you about Alec Tuckman and his film RAPID EYE MOVEMENT. The damn thing couldn’t have cost more than ten bucks, it stars unknown actors, it has crummy special effects and a lousy synth score. Not only do these things NOT present a problem, but I don’t think the movie even CARES. It’s too busy moving, weaving a deadly spell and keeping you tense and white-knuckled. It rockets past shortcomings by sheer force of will and it’s better than half the crap I’ve seen in theatres this year. Horror or otherwise.
Kansas Carradine plays Jenny Davis. She is haunted by demented nightmares that have her screaming when she wakes up. Her fiancée Todd (Federico Fafe) is concerned, to be sure, but is struggling with writer’s block and fear from another rejection slip from a publishing house. But as soon as Jenny starts telling him about her nightmares, he starts incorporating them into his novel, mining her misery for his own profit. So opportunistic does Todd grow, that when Jenny’s therapist starts to subscribe dream suppressants, Todd starts hiding the pills and replacing them with another medication that will actually HEIGHTEN the dreams.
It’s a testament to how well-written the film is, (Screenplay by Tuckman, story by Bronwyn Bakke, additional story ideas by Fafe) that when we start out with multiple subplots in lieu of a main, it doesn’t feel like ADD when we jump from one to the other. And all these subplots serve as build up to the battle of wills with Jenny fighting for her sanity and Todd fighting for his career. It’s patient, slow-burn writing that I haven’t seen in a while. Normally, the writer of a horror movie will drop you in an expository wasteland that serves no other purpose than to bore the living shit out of you. Tuckman keeps things speedy and interesting, moving from one scene to another, staying long enough to achieve a stylistic or story purpose and then rushing off to the next one.
If one were completely silly, (and I’m only HALF so) one would accuse RAPID EYE MOVEMENT of AVID humping. To be true, no shot in the film lasts over ten seconds, but it’s so much more than the Michael Bay school of Rapid Fire Editing, which is founded upon the question “How many different angles can we shoot the fireball from?” The editing in RAPID EYE MOVEMENT achieves the purpose that quick shots should, which is to build momentum. The film had my attention from the opening frame, which had a lot to do with Paul Alexander’s stellar cutting work. The genius of it is that there is not one orphan or useless shot. Not a SINGLE one. No shots of people walking towards their cars, or getting glasses of water or getting out of bed that would just clutter any other film. The purpose of this is that you get more movie for your running time. It’s like Tuckman and Alexander crammed a two hour film up an eighty-nine minute movie’s ass.
And yes, the film is cheap and the special effects aren’t the best in the world, but they work. Tuckman handles this in a peculiar way by, well, not really handling it at all. Have you noticed in these latter-day cheapies that when filmmakers’ imaginations are bigger than their coffers, they hide their special effects, uncover them apologetically or get you to laugh at how cheesy they are? Tuckman just shows them, and lets the rest of the movie do his talking for him. It’s like he’s daring us to laugh at them. And I took the dare and pussed out.
And the acting is good. No not the “It’s-good-for-this-kind-of-movie-with-this-kind-of-budget” good. THAT’S a cop-out. No, REALLY good. It all boils down to our two leads. Carradine is very good as Jenny, who is trying to maintain a cheery façade while her mental health is eroding and is failing miserably at it. But it’s Fafe as Todd Truman who turns what any other nimrod would have made into a stock psycho, into the William H. Macy role. He WANTS to do good and take care of his girl while building his career at the same time, but she and the laws of common decency just aren’t cooperating with him. His hangdog expression of love and his leer of obsession are eerily similar, which makes him all the more frightening.
The only black spot on this film is one dream sequence with a preacher who overacts to such an extent that I think he pulled a muscle. A minor complaint to be sure, but I’m harder on the movies that I’m liking as I watch them, and wrong moves just blare out at me. As it stands, RAPID EYE MOVEMENT is a very impressive work that shows great promise. And in the land of the timid, I was blown away by the film’s insistence upon itself and the Mad-Prophet zeal of Tuckman himself.
But there is a downside. Being as Tuckman has proven himself promising with this film, I’m holding him to the same standard I hold to any other directors who make an unexpected surprise such as this: If his next movie blows? Oh BOY am I gonna be pissed…
3 1/2 out of 4
Read all of Dr. Royce Clemens reviews in his Archives
