Really Awful Movies

Cop Car wears its influences like a decal. The premise, straight-up film noir: what to do with a dead body.

Kevin Bacon is the corrupt sheriff burdened with that very task, but Cop Car is more about two scamps than it is about moving a body. Runaways Trevor and Harrison are industrious 10-year-olds trespassing through fields in the US Southwest, trying to outdo one another with foul language and trying to pass the time as “nobody’s gone looking for them yet.”

They soon stumble upon the police vehicle the sheriff had to suddenly abandon.

“Dare you to touch it,” is the gauntlet thrown down by one, but they let youthful exuberance get the better of them and get behind the wheel of the cop car. Soon, they’re hightailing it through the fields like a couple of Dale Earnhardt Jrs, breaking down a gate with the front-end in order to get out to the main drag to see what that baby really can do.

Because we’re in noir territory (or neo-noir), even with kids as protagonists, it should come as no surprise that things spiral out of control.

This happens when the joyriders spot the cache of weapons inside and the duo lurches out onto the freeway. Goading one another to see if they can reach new highs on the speedometer, they’re in an instant game of chicken with a local, who notifies the authorities when she’s nearly driven off the road.

With the law tipped off, soon the nasty sheriff has bigger fish to fry than devising a killer alibi and has the boys in his sights.

While not as red herring-resistant as say, Sam Raimi’s exemplary A Simple Plan, Cop Car is never dull.

Bacon is terrific as a nearly unrecognizable dimwit. He’s decked out like My Name is Earl on casual Fridays, complete with a wife-beater and a mustache that has this Cop Car driver in Cop Land territory when it comes to facial hair.

But it’s really all about the kids. James Freedson-Jackson and Hays Wellford acquit themselves very well and are clearly having a joyous time of it. And who wouldn’t, given the circumstances (at least initially)?

Cop Car is a noble effort, even if it does go off the skids toward the final quarter.

***1/2 (out of 5)

We have a tendency in the horror community to rhapsodize about particular epochs, what Pynchon called a “temporal homesickness for the decade we were born in.” It’s usually the 80s, as tastes are chiseled from the stone of youth. That’s fine and all, but it’s our opinion that to truly love horror, one has to keep pace with the here and now.

When something like White Raven comes along, it’s something that is at once familiar, yet charts new ground and reminds us that the genre is alive and well.

It’s brazen and ballsy enough to provide ample depth and backstory for a film which is, on the surface, about being trapped in the backwoods. Just as much effort is put into the camaraderie as there is the scares, a lesson it could teach some of those 80s classics we all grew up on.

Much like the outstanding Goodnight Mommy explored mother / son relationships in heretofore unforeseen ways, White Raven breaks down male friendship dynamics when a “boys weekend” in the BC forest turns these guys into men real quick.

Erratic, suicidal Pete (pictured above) is the group’s he-man, a buff loner survivalist who mocks his soft Vancouver city-dwelling friends. Problem is, he lacks the moral scruples of a Lewis from James Dickey’s Deliverance, and pines over an ex who’s clearly moved on and since remarried. Then there’s Jake, an aging cad who runs a restaurant and has impregnated a staffer. Baby-faced Kevin seemingly has it all including a wife, a child and a condo, and bristles when pressed over whether there’s “trouble in Paradise”. And finally, Dan is an ex-pilot who lost his license to fly after failing a random drug test.

Proportionally, though their screen time might be smaller, it’s the women whose brief, yet rich appearances contextualize everything that comes after. We get clear insights from them as to why these 30-something guys might need a break away from their lives, “to get away from it all.”

Once in the bush, these man-children fail to “put away childish things” to quote Corinthians and behave like spring break coeds, shotgunning beer and staging “five second fights,” in which they mock punch each other.

It’s the conspicuous male bonding that conceals the psychic scars beneath.

To say anything more about White Raven would be too revealing.

We can say that the directing, script and performances are top-drawer throughout. Like the very best survivalist movies (the aforementioned Deliverance, The Hills Have Eyes, Southern Comfort, and others) Mother Nature provides a great external boundary and is just as much a star here.

***1/2 (out of 5)

[Be sure to check out the Really Awful Movies Podcast: a Celebration of Low Budget Cinema]