REVIEW: Teeth (2007)

Welcome to the new and improved Cinema Freaks, where I only review movies based on current events from three weeks ago! Today’s movie is Teeth, which serves as a great support to Senator Todd Akin’s claim that women have a special defense system against being raped and having children through rape, because this movie is about a girl with teeth in her vagina!

Director: Mitchell Lichtenstein

Starring: Jess Wexler, John Hensley

IMDb

Yup…I don’t think any further introduction is needed. I actually think my previous sentence explains it all. So why am I going to continue writing stuff? Because I have a God complex and you all will listen to me FOREVER!

The film begins with two little kids sitting in a pool and showing each other their private parts while their parents sit in lawn chairs and drink beer – classy, right? The camera cuts away for a second and then the kid’s finger is bleeding…gee, I wonder what happened?

Hint: he stuck his finger down there and her vagina bit it off like a piranha. Just in case you couldn't, you know, guess.

After an opening credit scene of little biological genes floating around and infecting one another with the black plague apparently, which could be used in any instructional science video, we get our main character Dawn.

No; not that Dawn. This Dawn:

The way these kids react is more fanatical than the Children of the Corn, for Christ's sake. Whoops, was that a blasphemy? I'm sorry...I'm so sorry...

She’s a motivational speaker at schools telling kids to wait until marriage to have sex, and even gives out purity rings, which OF COURSE are the real deal, and can NEVER just be taken off whenever said wearer feels like it…also, I think I’ve already seen this plot in South Park. It involved the Jonas Brothers being killed by Mickey Mouse. Which one is more ridiculous? YOU DECIDE...

So anyway, we learn that Dawn has a brother who looks like something out of American History X and apparently does nothing all day but hang out with his girlfriend in his room and have anal sex…

He also likes to sit in his underwear with a gun in his hand. Because he's just that cool.

This is all very subtly psychological, indicating that he’s still afraid of vaginas after what happened to him as a kid. It’s very well done in this scene anyway (later on, when they're still arguing about having sex an hour into the film, it gets a little overblown), but honestly, just call Dr. Phil. He’ll help you out better than being in this movie ever could.

Dawn starts hanging out with this one guy who acts like a serial killer, so of course she’s attracted to him. But their Christian upbringing prevents them from even doing things like watching PG-13 movies together because there would be too much making out. They go with some friends to the woods and the creek, where apparently people go in this cave nearby to do “you know what…” in the words of the super-conservative Christian girl whose name I can't remember. Wait, what do they do in there? Swim?

However, after her brother tells her he wants to sleep with her, she decides to throw caution to the wind and invite creepy serial killer guy to go swimming in the creek, where stuff escalates pretty quickly:

A typical relationship for Dawn: Day 1, "we can't make out because we have to wait till marriage to even think about sex." Day 2, "we can't see each other because our thoughts are impure." Day 3, "let's make out and you can touch my boobs!" Geez...some women...

Then when he decides he wants to rape her…well…

Better luck next time, buddy! Oh wait…

That's supposed to be his body floating face-down in the water, by the way. Damn murky pictures...ruining my reputation around here.

Huh. I guess this scumbag rapist being removed from the gene pool ISN’T something we should mourn. Moving on, then. Dawn goes through some very serious guilt trip scenes about what she did, which are actually very well done and atmospheric, far surpassing what most movies like this end up going for. She researches vagina dentata, the phenomenon/myth of vaginas with teeth that this movie was based on, and she hears a steady drum beat in her head, so clearly she’s actually a forgotten Time Lord…

Ahem, wait, no.

Actually she just goes to a gynecologist where her vagina bites off his fingers. I just love this scene solely for what happens afterwards: he’s sitting on the ground, bleeding and hysterical, and he shouts “VAGINA DENTATA! IT’S TRUE! VAGINA DENTATAAAA!” That’s pretty damn funny. Is it like the bogeyman of gynecologists everywhere? The monster beneath their operating tables, keeping them in line? I want to see a movie about this guy. I’m sure it would be a story worth seeing.

Panicking, Dawn goes over to the house of the one guy who liked her earlier and was very frustrated when she turned him down, saying she has “nowhere else to go.” So why didn’t she just find someone else from her little Christian group thing? We even saw earlier she hung out with more people from the group; one of whom was a girl! So really? Her only option is to go to the house of the one guy who had a crush on her? She even takes a bath in his house and accepts strange pills and drinks from him. For someone so focused on purity until marriage, she’s really not very good at keeping herself safe otherwise. I mean what if something TERRIBLE happens…

"Hello, I'm Dr. Date-Rape. How can I assist you today?"

Yeah! Like that!

They actually do manage to have sex without her killing him this time, mostly because she was drugged and not angry or resisting this time, which seems to be the condition for her "teeth" activating. I will ignore the fact that this guy apparently wanted to have sex with her so bad that he would ignore the fact that she was panicking about having murdered someone. Actually, I think that’s probably the most realistic thing in the movie…guys just do anything to get laid.

Anyway, they have sex again, but this time she finds out that he made a bet with his jackass friend that he could have sex with her. So it’s chomping time again!

In a stroke of amazingly bad luck, she finds out that her mother has died in the hospital while all of this was going on, and that it was her brother’s fault for not responding to her screams for help, probably because he was busy trying out for the Broadway production of American History X the musical. The dad goes in and beats him up for being a disrespectful little shit.

This dad kicks ASS. You show that wannabe skinhead what's what!

As a completely rational response, the brother sics his big black dog on the dad!

A big black dog AGAIN? Gee…I’ve never seen THAT before…

Anyway, Dawn hears about this and decides to take the ultimate revenge – sex with her half brother following in more genital severance like this movie specializes in!

Dawn, having nothing left to tie her down, becomes a roadside drifter who has deadly sex with any man who tries to screw with her…literally and figuratively. I’m so glad this movie exists so that men in our US Senate can validate their otherwise strange and ridiculous opinions. What an oddly specific triumph for our country! Shame about the whole demeaning womens' rights thing though. You win some you lose some, I guess.

But seriously, I’d like to say a few things about Teeth. This was actually a good film, and very much something worth watching for fans of horror who want something a little more offbeat and abstract. Nowhere near the sleazefest I was expecting, Teeth is a very clever movie with great acting and camerawork. It’s a film about female empowerment tackled through a very strange, humorous and often gory plot point.

First and foremost, the acting is just excellent in this. It can get cartoonish at times, but only when the movie demands it, and you never really get the sense that the director just didn’t know what he was doing like you do in some other movies. This was a very calculated film, with the director finding a style that worked for him and getting some very appropriate, funny and oftentimes chilling performances out of these actors. Jess Wexler as Dawn is very, very good. She gives a really emotive performance and captures all the fear and bashful shyness that her character is going through, and he really got some great fear scenes out of her – I mean god damn. I can’t really describe it well enough through text, but the atmosphere of the film combined with her sort of withered, trapped-puppy-dog look is just immense.

The other actors are all really good as well, as I mentioned, but since there are really only two central characters, I’ll just talk about one more to save time – John Hensley as the brother, Brad. This character could have easily just been horrible. He’s the stereotypical mean delinquent older half-brother, but his personality has been shaped by what happened as a kid, when he got his finger bitten off by Dawn’s “teeth” down below. Now he’s got this twisted thing going on where he can’t have sex anymore because he’s afraid of vaginas subconsciously and also he’s attracted to Dawn. It’s not a GREAT character or anything, but hot damn does John Hensley sell this part! I mean this guy is on fire here. He takes this caricature, this Freudian miracle of psychiatry, this absolute piggy-bank for anyone who practices in the field, and turns the character into a stone cold mean, threatening and very believable villain.

Some people just can’t be helped – some people are damaged beyond repair through no fault of their own, and because of something strange and terrible that happened a long time ago. But sometimes those people turn into monsters and do harm to others, and then there is no more pity one can feel for them. Hensley’s performance as Brad is cold-hearted, sinister and sick as hell, and he is one of the best parts of the movie.

The real strength here is how good main character Dawn is, though. Dawn, afflicted with a very odd and horrific genetic mutation, coped with it growing up by turning into a total abstinence freak and a big religious nut. But paradoxically, that also makes her journey in the film much more harrowing and compelling than it would be if she was just a regular kid without all the religious stuff. Her “purity” which she defines herself by ironically is the biggest factor in her slide into a different personality – perhaps her heel-face turn wouldn’t have been so extreme if she wasn’t so bent on religion, but then again, if she didn’t have her “teeth” in the first place, she wouldn’t be that way either. Both of these aspects of Dawn – the physical and the mental – feed off one another and create something rather compelling out of such a goofy premise, and she becomes a fully three dimensional character. Maybe the movie could have worked even better if they jettisoned some of the comedic elements out, but with a plot this bizarre I don’t think that would really be feasible – I’ll get to that in a minute.

And there are goofy moments in this film, don’t get me wrong; very good ones. It’s very wry and witty and tackles its topic with enough down-to-Earth humor so that it doesn’t just become a pretentious mess. The balance between the comedy and the horror is really excellent and they start to blend together way better than some movies do. A lot of movies just sort of stick the comedy in and the horror in as very separate pieces, and as such, one of the two isn’t done that well, if not just the entire film.

Teeth works because both the comedy and the horror play off one another and create something stylish and fresh, amplifying both elements – it’s funny and actually pretty creepy at times, beyond just the gore effects. Director Mitchell Lichtenstein has a real feel for combining music with a scene. Sometimes it gets really goofy and parodic, imitating old school happy family sitcom music (MUCH better than anything that crap-ass movie Parents did), and sometimes it’s teeth-bitingly (ha ha) ominous like when Dawn is researching the “vagina dentata” myth, with some really good use of tribal drum sounds to create tension. The whole soundtrack is incredibly over the top, but surprisingly it really works – the whole movie is incredibly over the top, too.

So, yeah, with all this it makes it seem like there’s nothing gory or ridiculous in this film. Well, it’s safe to say, if you really, REALLY don’t like seeing mutilated male genitals, this probably wouldn’t be a good film to watch. And if you were looking for a movie to watch with your new girlfriend and her family…this wouldn’t be the best choice. The gore is silly and over the top and Litchenstein’s directing portrays it starkly and nakedly, without showing too much or too little. It has the effect it should – it’s shocking and brutal. But it’s never exploitative or gratuitous and doesn’t feel forced. The gore pretty much has to be there. It’s what the movie is about.

Teeth isn’t for everyone and it’s bound to create some controversy because of its theme and presentation, but from my standpoint, it’s really good. The directing is fantastic and artful, the acting is wonderful and the way the story is told is meaningful and has a real impact on you. It’s got witty moments and some silly scenes, but also some very powerful and serious ones, too. The film just is what it is, and those who are predetermined to hate it before even watching it will probably just hate it. But if you go in with an open mind and let the film surprise you, it’s quite a trip and well worth your time. One of the best horror movies of the 2000s for sure.

Images copyright of their respective owners. I do not own any of them.

REVIEW: Shame (2011)

 

Director: Steve McQueen

Starring: Michael Fassbender, Carey Mulligan

Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0986233/

Shame is a provocative drama about a man’s discovery about who he really is sexually. It is a quiet and subtle film that doesn’t use a boat-load of dialogue or outward exposition to tell you the story, and if you’re not paying attention, a lot of the movie’s finer points might be lost on you. Definitely not a movie for those with short attention spans or those looking for a cheap thrill, Shame is like the fine wine of movies – something rich, textured and intricately complex.

Michael Fassbender plays the lead and I can only imagine how tough this role was, as the camera is on him alone a lot of the time and he doesn’t have a lot of dialogue, so the easy way of emoting and conveying to the audience the sense of character is out the window. This is a slow moving film that unfolds its story through sometimes silent, wordless images and the expressions on Fassbender’s face. His character is a stoic and tight-fisted corporate office man who gets his jones by constantly watching porn and getting good looking, often high-class women to come back and have sex with him. It’s almost as if he’s compensating for something.

Until his sister, played by Carey Mulligan, shows up. His sister Sissy is a fun-loving, impulsive and brash young woman whose only job seems to be singing at clubs and sleeping with men, and she cannot seem to get her life together. Mulligan plays the role really well – very spunky and yet haunted character who tries her best to be happy as any average person does. But sometimes trying is not enough, now, is it? The characterization in this is just first rate, and is really the reason the whole thing works so beautifully.

There is also a palpable sense of atmosphere resonating through this movie, of smoky New York city streets flooded with fog, of dark shadowy apartment hallways as if they are hiding some secret that has to be wrenched out, as if it wanted to stay in the shadows in the first place, of empty, white bedrooms in the early mornings with wide, airy panoramic views of the city below, as if the person in that bedroom (well, Fassbender, obviously) is far away from everyone else – separated, alienated by his sex addiction and consequently the secrets buried by that sex addiction.

The film unfolds like an uncoiling serpent, showing you scenes that are sometimes very short and sometimes very long, and always have a great sense of pacing to them – they connect together like a beautiful puzzle. The first ten minutes have almost no words and contain only images of Fassbender engaging in sexual acts or clearly thinking about it as he goes about his day-by-day activities. Once the dialogue is actually introduced, it’s a stark but welcome contrast, and is very well written for that.

Ultimately this is a story of two siblings both going through a hard time. Fassbender is a sex addict on a downward spiral because he can’t find something that truly satisfies his needs. He gets angrier and angrier as the film goes on and takes it all out on Sissy. However, he ignores the fact that she is troubled as well, and ultimately a tragedy results from this miscalculation. Fassbender isn’t perfect – far from it in fact. He’s portrayed as a neurotic, selfish and impudent man whose insecurities and frustrations are channeled through the only outlet that can’t reject you or walk away – family.

There is a lot to be said about life here, like that ultimately, it’s up to you to do what makes you happy sexually and otherwise, no one else will do it for you most of the time. And sometimes, you get lost along the way, because the world has no cheat code manuals or hand-books to help you out of everyday situations, and you get stuck in a rut where you don’t just climb out of it easy. And the downward spiral commences. Shame is about a man at the last edges of his spiral. Beautifully written, beautifully acted and just a haunting and memorable film.

Review: Jennifer's Body (2009)

Director: Karyn Kusama

Starring: Megan Fox's Body

Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1131734/

"You're giving me such a wetty."

-Jennifer

This movie makes several things very clear to me. Karyn Kusama is indeed continuing her tirade against the progression of women in movies. Megan Fox’s acting is inversely proportional to the amount of times they show off her breasts and ass in any given film. And Diablo Cody should never be allowed to pick up a pen to write a screenplay ever again. Ever. Again. No, seriously. EVER. AGAIN. Just had to emphasize that. Yes, this is the writer from Juno, the director of Aeon Flux and the lead actress of Transformers, people; we are in for a hell of a shit-carnival in 2009’s Jennifer’s Body…man, am I ever scared.

This is just such a dirty, unpleasant and all around trashy film in every respect. It is a sad, depraved case that is completely removed from reality, without any trace of anything resembling normal human logic. There’s no shame or dignity to it at all; it’s like a festering wound. Odious, sloppy bile seeps from every pore. What am I supposed to learn from this? Never run in with a Satanic emo band? Never become friends with a girl who feasts on flesh? It’s just shit, people. It’s really, really shit.

Sigh. Let’s get started. We kick off the shitfest with a girl named Needy, who is in a mental hospital. Presumably after seeing this movie and realizing she would never work in film again, but I’m not going to judge. She gets pissed at an orderly who tells her to eat healthier and then fucking kicks her across the room somehow, even though she’s like a third of the orderly’s size. Then she gets locked up in solitary, where the idea for this movie should have stayed. But no, she has to tell us her story, because I guess she thinks we give a shit. “Hell is a teenage girl,” she narrates, and…I guess we’re supposed to sympathize with her or something? Who cares. Let’s just get this over with.

The flashback begins with a crappy zoom shot through a house with spooky noises all around it. Does the movie think it is a haunted house tour now? All that’s missing is an evil laugh done in a deep voice, and then the movie is set! But no, instead we have the destruction of women’s rights to be seen and documented…like here, with the first bit of dialogue between Needy – what kind of a name is that again? – and her baby-faced boyfriend Chip:

Chip: Those jeans are hella low. I can almost see your front butt.

Needy: It's a rock show. This is my rock look.

Chip: Well, I can see, like, your womb, so...

Huh. Maybe that’s not representative of all the dialog---

Jennifer: [Grabs Needy's breasts] These are like smart bombs, you point them in the right direction and shit gets real.

Erm…

Needy: The whole country got a tragedy-boner for Devil’s Creek.

…huh?

Jennifer: I'm not even a backdoor-virgin anymore, thanks to Roman. By the way, that hurts. I couldn't even go to flags the next day. I had to stay home and sit on a bag of frozen peas.

Okay, okay, make it stop!

Jennifer: You give me such a wetty.

A wetty? A tragedy-boner? WHAT THE HELL DOES ANY OF THIS MEAN? Talk like normal people, you wretched excuses for humans! Who lets Diablo Cody write this, anyway? Who the fuck is actually under the wishful thinking that Diablo Cody’s writing is in any way intriguing or intelligent? It’s totally ridiculous, every bit of it! “But ooh,” you’ll say. “She won an Oscar for Juno! She must be a good writer! It’s so quirky and original!” Fuck that noise. This is completely inexcusable. And the whole goddamned movie is full of this. Every scene is full of dialogue that makes me want to gouge out my eardrums with a chainsaw. It’s an hour and forty minutes of dialogue that would make Cashback blush. That is shit.

Fuck! Let’s just try and get through the actual plot. If there is one. So basically Jennifer, played by Megan Fox, is a snobby cheerleader who is so one-dimensional I’d be able to see through her if it wasn’t for the thick layer of stupid clouding her entire person. She basically pushes her best friend named Needy Lesnicky, played by Amanda Seyfried, around all the time just because she can. They go to a rock concert where there’s an emo band playing, called Low Shoulder - that's a stupid name for a band. And…okay, here’s the next big problem with this movie.

The music sucks. I mean I am serious; could you possibly get any more bland and unremarkable music and call it rock? Every single fucking song; nothing but senseless guitar plucking and singing that could be done better by any given dead cat. It’s really hard to buy that anyone would actually find this appealing. Even the most brain-dead of indie rock blow-hards wouldn’t find this guttertrash in any way entertaining. It’s completely insipid and void of any kind of value. But then, that’s exactly what I would expect from two morons who are completely out of touch with reality, good taste and modern society alike. So I’m not too disappointed.

Luckily the bar burns down and kills everybody inside, except unfortunately Jennifer, Needy and the emo band survive. Fuck, I was really hoping the movie would end quick with that…you missed your opportunity, O God of Fire. I am disappointed. So the emo band takes Jennifer into their van, which isn’t suspicious at all, and then we fast forward to the night, when Needy is talking to her boyfriend on the phone and she hears a thump in the night. It turns out to be Jennifer, who does some creepy stuff, eats the food out of Needy’s fridge and then vomits up a black bile-like substance in a manner that I believe is akin to how this movie’s script was written.

The next day we see that their teacher is played by JK Simmons…okay, seriously, how did he even get in here? He’s a goofy high school teacher with a robotic hand for some reason…what, is this supposed to be funny or something? What the hell is the purpose of it? Oh well, we have a pointless kill scene to go through as Jennifer seduces the captain of the football team by telling him that his dead best friend in the fire wanted the two of them to be together. Why would he believe this silly, transparent lie? I think you know why.

What color are her eyes?

So she basically disembowels him and drinks his blood, all shown here in full, vivid color. Because this movie has no shame. She also kills an ‘emo’ guy played by Kyle Gallner, who I feel sorry for as he looks like he was gang-banged by a Hot Topic store. While this is going on, Needy and her dweeby boyfriend are having awkward high school sex with SuperTarget condoms (…yeah, they really do say that), and Needy starts having psychic visions of Jennifer killing the guy, leading her to get up and go find her. When she does that, she ends up at Jennifer’s house where they have a spontaneous lesbian make-out scene.

…what? I’m sorry, what? That’s…really weird. It just came out of nowhere! Yes, it was pretty hot but…why even put it in the movie? Right after it they just act like it never happened. Jennifer starts telling her what happened the night she got kidnapped. Apparently the rock band actually revealed to her that they were Satanists who couldn’t get famous any other way, so they had to start sacrificing virgins and bleeding them out in order to get fame and…do they really think any of this is funny? It’s not. Let’s skip it.

The movie plods along with Needy discovering that Jennifer has turned into a succubus by – get this – reading about it at the occult section in the school library. Wow. You’re not even trying, are you? It’s like they just said, fuck it, we don’t even care about trying to tell a story. WHAT KIND OF SCHOOL WOULD HAVE AN OCCULT SECTION IN THE LIBRARY? Fuck it, the movie’s almost over anyway. So Jennifer seduces Needy’s boyfriend and almost kills him before she shows up and they fight. Jennifer delivers lines like “Got a tampon?” when she gets stabbed…ugh…and then the boyfriend dies and Needy goes to kill Jennifer and does. But not before one of the greatest lines in movie history.

I am serious. It’s up there with “Rosebud,” “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore” and “We have a failure to communicate.” This line is groundbreaking! Yes, in Megan Fox’s last breaths, as she is stabbed through the heart, she utters the beautiful and poetic words “My tit?” before she dies.

Swoon, audience! Swoon like you’ve never swooned before!

The people behind this movie seem to think Jennifer’s Body is on the same level as similar ‘female-themed’ horror movies like Carrie and Rosemary’s Baby. This is clearly wrong on every conceivable level, not to mention batshit insane. This is a movie that tries to be funny and meaningful at the same time and fails at both. The jokes are mired in wretched dialogue and the meaning is completely silly once you factor in the amount of pandering, slavishly unpleasant indecency on display – ooh, so it’s a metaphor; who gives a shit? It’s hamfisted, clumsy and very poorly written.

This movie is an ugly, wretched thing that makes me feel dirty even sitting through five minutes of it, let alone an hour and forty minutes. There’s just nothing at all likable about it. If you have any given chance to smash this movie with a sledgehammer, do so in the name of women in movies everywhere. Goddamn, what trash! What utter trash!