Really Awful Movies

The Demolisher

The Demolisher is The Nail Gun Massacre gone to grad school, a sharp urban thriller with a superficially similar antagonist.

It’s its own genre too: vigilante melodrama. A psychological study of “Bruce,” a kind of PTSD Batman (capably portrayed by Ry Barrett) who cleans up the streets armored in police riot gear.

And there’s a reason the movie’s got smarts behind the visor.

Director Gabriel Carrer is the brains behind In the House of Flies, a terrific indie-basement horror seemingly inspired by the Barbara Mackle kidnapping, where a woman was held for ransom underground in a fiberglass-reinforced box outfitted for her to be kept alive with an air-pump and modest provisions. There, he proved he could provide scares in spades, mostly in just one room and through the phone voice of the tormentor.

Here, Carrer neatly juxtaposes invincibility (a recurring motif here) with vulnerability. The hard-as-nails Demolisher roams the streets by night, taking out biker baddies, while caring for his wheelchair-bound wife Samantha by day. She’s a former police woman who is trying to walk again after being brutally attacked.

As a counterpoint, there’s Marie, a young long-distance runner who, unbeknownst to her, enters Bruce’s crosshairs just as his tenuous grip on sanity really starts to crumble. Bruce’s paranoia gets the better of him and he sets his sights on Marie. Then things really get rolling.

And security is the other theme here: cameras/surveillance notices seemingly everywhere except in places they really need to be, allowing this law and order wannabe to do as he pleases. An absentee police force is no help and security guards prove ineffectual as well.

There’s a lot going on in a tight 80 minutes, including lots of morally ambiguous questions posed that audiences who cheered on the likes of Charles Bronson’s Paul Kersey or The Exterminator were never asked to ponder.

Other reviewers have pointed out how unlikely it is that Toronto, not known for its crime nor its high-profile cases of police brutality like New York or Los Angeles, would provide a suitable backdrop for a vigilante movie. But this reviewer noted the parallels between The Demolisher and law and order gone to seed — police in riot gear that brought “Toronto the Good” so much negative attention during the G20 Summit.

Dialogue is sparse and exposition is minimal, but the tension is thick. The atmosphere is stifling, with the wide-open, empty, night time streets appearing claustrophobic as Bruce’s world closes in on him. A truly evocative electro-score sets pulses pounding.

Book-ended by some pretty clever support group empowerment messages, The Demolisher is, dare we say, inspiring and a force to be reckoned with, even if it may limp along in some places.

***1/2 (out of 5)

LISTEN TO OUR CHAT WITH THE MOVIE’S STAR AND DIRECTOR ON THE REALLY AWFUL MOVIES PODCAST

Goodnight Mommy

Perusing Rotten Tomatoes, it seems reviews about a twin film set in Austria are mandated to reference Dead Ringers and the Von Trapp family. Why not Schwarzenegger / De Vito? The Governator is Austrian-born…We’ll avoid the obvious and avoid Godwin’s law as well while we’re at it…

All kidding aside, as really, everyone associates German speakers with humor, Goodnight Mommy, or Ich Seh, Ich Seh (“I see” literally, but referring to the children’s game of “I Spy”) is a shot to the liver. It’s without question, one of the most uniquely disturbing and innovative horrors you’ll ever see.

Killer kids are nothing new (Children of the Corn springs to mind in the first scene, as the monozygotes run through the stalks in a nearby field), but the psychological terror inflicted by this identical twosome make Damien from The Omen look like a model son.

Twin boys, Elias and Lukas, are young mop-tops whose favorite song is “Weisst du wieviel Sterne” (“Do you know how many stars there are?” and not “Go to Sleep, Go to Sleep,” Brahms’ Lullaby, as suggested by other reviewers).

Their mom is convalescing, or trying to at least, recovering from facial surgery that has her visage wrapped up in bandages.

And according to the young duo, mama’s not as she seems, physically nor in how she interacts with the boys. She pours juice only for one, addresses one who relays messages to the other, and cooks only for one. She tells one to shun the other and to repeat this cold-hearted injunction so that it takes hold.

The once doting divorcee has a dating profile, is surreptitiously selling the family’s stunning home (bubble chairs hang from the ceiling and the place’s décor is the stuff of Ikea nightmares) and appears physically different as well.

And she’s prone to flying off the handle, locking the boys in their room, jumping on them, and abusing them to the point where they fashion a shank out of a wooden pencil to use as a missile for a crossbow.

So…who’s the villain here?

Goodnight Mommy is a slow burn – fire even being a prominent feature of the film (the young duo are pyromaniacs who burn bugs with magnifying glasses). The performances are off-the-charts, and the Mise–en–scène juxtaposes Teutonic orderliness / Architectural Digest (the mom reads copies of Hauser magazine) with the chaos within the home’s walls. The twin direction, if you will, of Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala, is stellar. There are even a few uncomfortable laughs, particularly in a scene involving overly earnest, folksily-accented Red Cross solicitors, whose appeal for donations couldn’t come at a worse time.

A tentative start rewards viewers patient enough to be assaulted by the finish.

The horror genre is alive and well if you know where to look. It seems of late it’s Western Europe, and it’s nice to see another country other than France keeping the embers burning.

**** (out of 5)