Saturday, May 03, 2014
Sacked!
I did not know that this was actually a wonderful horror movie.
Well, not horror perhaps. A thriller? Scary.
I thought it would be a comedy! It is funny but scary funny. The best kind of scary if you reflect on it.
The Duplass Brothers who must know something about screen writers and other film folks ("write what you know" someone says so obviously that it is funny). Here they lay it out as four young people or is it three? Jesus. Some young film people go away for a weekend to write a script. Just toss one off.
There are unspoken tensions between them, mostly sexual but also artistic, that come to light as they try to create.
The tensions burst when a guy comes to the window, a window peeker, with a paper bag on his head.
This sounds funny and did to me until I saw it in the film. It scared the shit out of me.
It also freaks the young people out something wicked.
How they deal with this is the subject of the rest of the film as more stuff happens and the scares increase. Like most horror films the most upsetting part of watching this movie is the knowledge that something could or will happen any time and it will scare the shit out of me again.
When I was a kid, someone peeked into my window after I had gone to sleep and woke me up. It scared the shit out of me.
It was my Uncle Hank. He and others had been out drinking, I guess, and wound up at our house. Uncle Hank was a joker and this was his idea of a good time. As upsetting as it was for me I did get it and it set me on a lifetime of appreciation of rough play joking. My mother's family was noted for it and I became a practitioner as well. Yes, it is somewhat sadistic and sick. But that is its allure.
I think the Duplass Bro's play on this in the film. There is an appreciation of a scary joke finely played because of course no one goes around peeking in windows with paper bags on their head.
The twist here is that there is a consequence of the joke that turns out to be almost fatal. There another spoiler.
But is not. And these people, being rough players appreciate it even more especially the victim of the accident.
I liked this film a lot. I am in the middle of seeing all the Duplass films. This was their second one. Scary fun. These guys are really good.
A four out of Netflixfive. I forget the convention for writing this. Maybe it should change. Netflix4 out of 5? 4 out of Netflix5? We will see.
