This one has truly atrocious reviews but I wanted to give it a shot anyway because I have a fondness for weird films and this is the follow up after director David Robert Mitchell’s fantastic debut It Follows. Unfortunately after being given a decent budget and some name actors, what he created is a perfect example of what happens when a creator is given free rein on a project and indulges in every personal whim and fantasy without restraint.
The jobless Sam spends his time laying about his Los Angeles apartment peeping on his neighbors and indulging in weird conspiracy theories. One day he befriends a new neighbor Sarah but the next day discovers that she has mysteriously disappeared. He becomes obsessed with investigating what happened to her. When another woman visits the empty apartment and leaves with a box of Sarah’s possessions, he follows her and ends up amidst exclusive Hollywood parties populated by starlets. Another trail leads him to homebrew comic created by an expert in urban legends who claims that popular culture is filled with all manner of hidden messages directed towards a secretive elite. Other elements in the conspiracy include a dog killer, the pop band ‘Jesus and the Brides of Dracula’, and the disappearance of a Hollywood mogul at the same time as Sarah and much more.
On the face of it, this sounds like a cool premise and I love the idea of a massive and totally insane conspiracy that permeates every level of society and has been around forever. Unfortunately the execution is terrible. The film is too long and the director attempts to introduce too many different things that are tied together by only the most tenuous of connections. For example, I don’t think they ever explained what the dog killer thing was all about. It’s pretty clear that Mitchell who of course wrote the story himself, threw all manner of ideas into it purely on the basis of how cool he thought they were. As such, the killer who enforces the secrecy of the conspiracy is a naked woman wearing an owl mask. I have to admit that it makes for a good creepy story in a zine but it looks totally ridiculous and implausible on the screen. The longer the film goes on, the more apparent it becomes that this is just a random agglomeration of ideas born out of the director’s fevered and possibly drug-fueled imagination. However cool the ideas seem at first, there’s only so much of this you can take before you start wishing the film to be all over.
But the main reason this is a terrible film is that at heart this is just a puerile male fantasy. Sam is a jobless, talentless slob who suddenly is able to make use of his nerdy, previously useless knowledge of urban legends and video games to crack a world-shaking conspiracy. At the same time, he is presented with a succession of beautiful, sexually eager young women, nearly all of whom proceed to get naked before him. Note how Sam doesn’t express any dismay at all at the thought of old, male billionaires spiriting away harems of young women. No, what really makes him break down is the revelation that Kurt Cobain never wrote Smells Like Teen Spirit and that the youth revolution was a lite. Granted, there’s more than a whiff of tongue-in-cheek mockery in all this, but the film does nothing to undermine what a great fantasy this would be for that select male demographic. Literally every single female character in this film is a sex object and Sam seems to have no affection whatsoever for his girlfriend other than seeing her as a booty call.
All this means that this genuinely is a terrible film and there is no good reason to watch it. Even if all you’re interested in is the nudity, there are far better options out there. It’s pretty sad that once given a big budget and free rein, this is what Michell came up with and this should serve as a reminder that sometimes artists create their best work while under severe constraints.