BEFORE: That's right, last week was all horror movies, children's films, one about jazz and one about romances and ABBA songs. What can I say, I'm a complicated guy. This week is off to another confusing start with one about Russian politics, now one about a serial killer. Tomorrow it will be another (probably insipid) kiddie film, God help me. Genre whiplash is a serious condition.
Paul Chahidi carries over again from "The Death of Stalin" as I start the middle 100 films of 2019. Highlights of what's coming up, besides "Avengers: Endgame", include "A Star Is Born", "A Wrinkle in Time", "Moonlight" (finally!) and a whole lot of films with Bruce Greenwood. Plus I'll watch what could be my last Woody Allen film, look at a cappella music, atheism, drug smuggling, and boxing (again?) after we save the planet on Earth Day. And that's just the rest of April.
Today's film was another one that was on Netflix when I added it to my list, but then when I got around to watching it, it was gone. So I had to watch it on iTunes, but again, what gives, Netflix? A little research tells me it was only on the service for about 5 months in 2018, so either it performed terribly, or it got removed for some other reason, because I thought the standard Netflix deal was for 2 years. This is why I can't quite fully figure out streaming, because things come and go quite randomly, there's no rhyme nor reason to it all. And I can't get to see the new "Star Trek" or "Twilight Zone" TV shows without signing up for another service? Uh-uh, I don't negotiate with terrorists. If the shows are THAT GOOD, they should be on TV where people can, you know, watch them. What would be the harm in that?
THE PLOT: A likable guy pursues his office crush with the help of his talking pets, but things turn sinister when she stands him up for a date.
AFTER: What do you always hear on the news after they track down a serial killer? "Geez, he always seemed like such a nice guy, I never suspected he had a backyard full of bodies..." Exactly. If a serial killer ACTED like one, or what you think one would act like, then someone would report him straight away, right? Women in the 1970's couldn't believe how an attractive guy like Ted Bundy could possibly kill so many people, and though people might have thought Jeffrey Dahmer was a bit "off", they eventually realized they didn't know the half of it. Well, some people figured that out earlier, but by then it was too late. My point is, unless you can track someone's purchases at the hardware store ("Let's see, tarp, zip-ties, trash bags and a circular saw - will that be cash or credit?") or spy on their internet chats, we're never going to spot one until it's too late.
This is a story about a guy with a troubled past (his parents are German, trust me, that's already halfway to driving someone insane) who goes off his meds, and once he does that, a couple of things happen. He starts to hear voices, first from an imaginary roommate, and then from his cat, Mr. Whiskers, and his dog Bosco. The cat has a Scottish accent and suggests some very evil things, and the dog sounds more rural Southern U.S., and believes that everyone is a "good boy" at heart, except of course for the "Intruders!" who come and knock on his master's door.
This was a tough one for me, even though I like black comedy as much as the next guy - "Fargo" for example - but it seems like movies have been forced to raise the stakes lately, and now that we can use special effects to enhance what can be done to a body, all bets are off. Take "Deadpool", another film with Ryan Reynolds, as the height of the trend - Deadpool, like Wolverine, has a healing factor and can come back from just about any injury, so his movies keep having to show him getting injured in worse and worse ways, just to crank the intensity up and top what they've done before. And naturally "Deadpool 2" had to have even more cartoon violence than the first one.
"The Voices" came out before "Deadpool", but it's kind of a precursor to that type of injury-based black comedy, as Jerry inadvertently kills someone from the accounting department at the bathroom fixtures plant where he works. It's also the woman who stood him up for a date, but that's just a coincidence, right? Or is his subconscious driving the bus and coloring his perceptions? What's mildly interesting here is the fact that we see Jerry's apartment in two different ways - when he takes his medication, we can see the blood stains on the walls and the stack of mysterious boxes that he's not dealing with, but when his mind is free from the drugs, it's a beautiful place to live, no trash, no stains, no pet waste. One could almost forget that it's an apartment over an abandoned bowling alley in the middle of nowhere. Though I wonder if chemically it should be the other way around, with the drugs helping him see things in a BETTER light, not as they really are.
I had to look up who was doing the voices of the dog and the cat - I thought maybe it was Jeff Bridges and Simon Pegg, but nope, all the voices are Ryan Reynolds. Which makes sense, because if they're all imaginary, they would all sound a little like Jerry, right? Reynolds seems pretty good at doing different accents and playing several characters at once, I remember that he also voiced the Juggernaut in "Deadpool 2".
I don't really know enough about schizophrenia to tell whether this is supposed to be an accurate representation of mental illness, or whether it's even appropriate to turn any condition like this into a source for black comedy. It feels kind of dirty to exploit serial killers like this, if that makes any sense. I know that some people DO hear voices, and sometimes they think they come from above and other times those voices say to do bad things - but I don't know enough about any of that to really pass judgement, or even agree or disagree with this portrayal of how it all works. Probably I'm overthinking this, like I do with most things.
This film apparently played at the Sundance Film Festival in 2014, along with "Frank", "Wish I Was Here", "The Trip to Italy" and "They Came Together". Based on what I remember about the type of films I've seen there, that seems about right.
Also starring Ryan Reynolds (last seen in "The Hitman's Bodyguard"), Anna Kendrick (last seen in "Table 19"), Gemma Arterton (last seen in "Runner Runner"), Jacki Weaver (last seen in "The Polka King"), Sam Spruell (last seen in "Snow White and the Huntsman"), Adi Shankar, Ella Smith, Stanley Townsend (last seen in "Florence Foster Jenkins"), Valerie Koch, Gulliver McGrath (last seen in "Hugo"), Paul Brightwell, Alessa Kordeck, Stephanie Vogt, Harvey Friedman, Michael Pink.
RATING: 4 out of 10 Tupperware containers
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