Tusk

With a premise that’s part Se7en, part Criminal Minds, you’d be forgiven for thinking Tusk is dumb 2000s-style torture p*rn. But you’d be wrong.

This is a savvy, talky affair, directed by Kevin Smith (Dogma, Clerks) and starring everyone’s favorite whipping boy Scream King, Justin Long (whose punchability is often polarizing, but who’s used to great effect here).

Long plays an edge-lord podcaster, Wallace, lured to Manitoba, Canada by the promise of meeting and thereafter mocking an oblivious light saber-wielding lolcow. But when the gomer ends up dead, Wallace is stuck in Winnipeg with no content to curate/create and nobody to exploit.

Dejected, Wallace hits up a local bar which doesn’t accurately reference either of the Central Canadian city’s pro sports teams. However, the joint does have a strange, enigmatic post in the men’s bathroom, which has nothing whatsoever to do with who is or isn’t a good time and how to reach them. Rather, it’s an enticement of someone with quite a tale to tell.

Wallace calls the number, and hits the open road to a stately mansion north of Winterpeg, where he finds a debonair recluse interlocutor, the improbably named, Howard Howe. The two get acquainted by exploring a wide range of subject matter – ranging from Hemingway to The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

Before too long, however, Wallace is woozy from tainted tea, and when he comes to, finds himself in quite a predicament.

Smart, gory and often surprising, Tusk is marred by lazy Canadian stereotypes Kevin Smith, an oft-visitor to these parts, should’ve done something…ABOOT.

***1/4 (out of 5)

For more, check out the Really Awful Movies Podcast discussion of Tusk.