BEFORE: After two months of training and waiting (mostly waiting), I'm starting my second job today. Will talk about what it is and where it is tomorrow, but it's been a challenge just to get to this point, I kind of had to re-think what it is I've been trying to do, and by extension who I'm trying to be. Remember that one's career history may not be a straight path, there could be twists and turns along the way, this is probably a turn, but I'm making it with a plan for other turns down the road.
The problem with my main gig is that twice a year the place shuts down for nearly a month, and I can't get any shifts that way. I understand, it's a college and there's a summer break and a winter break, and permanent staffers like to take vacations, too, but I'm not a staffer, I'm a temp, and two months where I can't make any money presents a bit of a problem. So maybe with two part-time jobs I can do a little better, however the new challenge is figuring out how to make myself available on two different calendars for the maximum number of days without creating the conflict of needing to be in two places at the same time. Before, when I had two jobs, they were only about 10 blocks away from each other, so I could sometimes work both in the same day, or if I was needed for an emergency at the other one, I could be there fairly quickly. That's not the case any more, my jobs are in two different NYC boroughs, so I have to work out each month's schedule in advance, and then before each week starts, when I find out when Job A doesn't need me, I have to adjust my availability for Job B. Now I just have to figure out which job is Job A and which one is Job B. I guess I'll see how things go tonight, who knows, I could fail in some spectacular fashion, it's been known to happen.
Kyle Gallner carries over from "A Nightmare on Elm Street" (2010)
THE PLOT: A twisted one-night stand spirals into a serial killer's vicious murder spree.
AFTER: This film really shouldn't work, because the story's broken up into chapters, and the chapters are maddeningly not presented in chronological order. Sure, why not? Somebody thinks that he's Tarantino, I'll bet. But it kind of low-key works, because the first couple chapters don't give us that much information, and then as we continue bouncing around in time it's not TOO difficult to put things in the proper order, and I get that if we had that slow build that came with waiting for things to develop, this could have turned boring very easily.
And two serial killers coming together and circling each other and trying to both figure each other out AND come out on top, well, that should be pretty exciting, and yeah, it kind of is. You can imagine this as a one-night stand gone wrong, but then also realize that maybe every interaction with a serial killer becomes a one-night stand, for obvious reasons. We don't think of serial killers as normal, not by any stretch of the imagination, so what happens when you get TWO of them in the same hotel room? Well, a lot of freaky stuff, to start with. And here maybe we see the difference between male and female serials, the males are more likely to be introverted, perhaps even closeted, and also maybe socially disconnected, so we might not expect a sexual interaction with a woman to go well, for a number of reasons. A woman serial killer (and they're probably less common, other than Aileen Wuornos, I'm hard pressed to think of any) would be more likely to have an agenda, perhaps due to sexual abuse in the past or a genuine hatred of men and how they operate.
It's too bad, because these two crazy kids seem like they might be meant for each other, they at least understand each other, and you can't say that about every couple. But right away you can see there's going to be a problem, like who's going to make the first move, who's going to tie up who? And then trust is a two-way street, are you going to let that person tie you up, do you believe that they will untie you when you ask? Always have a safe word, sure, but how do you know the other person is going to honor it? Then, when each person knows a number of different ways to kill the other one, who's going to make THAT move first? Really this is a peek into the brains of two broken people, though they may be broken in different ways - and male serial killers are from Mars and female serial killers are from Venus, so perhaps this relationship was doomed from the start, they were never going to hold it together for any length of time.
The only question then becomes, how many other people are they going to drag down with them? Once the chase begins there's a very madcap but violent "Cocaine Bear" feel to all of this, and if you think you know how it's going to play out, you're probably very very wrong. Is there, deep down, any actual love or attraction here? Perhaps just for a minute or two, which is sad to say, but this is where we find ourselves. Of course, this one's set in Oregon, because we know that the rainy climate there produces two types of weirdos, serial killers and animators. Prove me wrong.
Directed by JT Mollner
Also starring Willa Fitzgerald (last seen in "The Goldfinch"), Madisen Beaty (last seen in "Other People"), Bianca A. Santos (last seen in "The DUFF"), Steven Michael Quezada (last seen in "Girlfriend's Day"), Ed Begley Jr. (last seen in "Stay Hungry"), Barbara Hershey (last seen in "The Pallbearer"), Denise Grayson (last seen in "The Social Network"), Eugenia Kuzmina (last seen in "That Awkward Moment"), Duke Mollner, Sheri Foster (last seen in "U Turn"), Andrew Segal, Jason Patric (last seen in "The Lost Boys"), and the voices of Giovanni Ribisi (last seen in "Basic"), Robert Craighead (last seen in "Cujo")
RATING: 6 out of 10 pieces from a Scott Baio jigsaw puzzle
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