ScreenFish

where faith and film are intertwined

murder

Guns Akimbo: Gamified Murder

by Leave a Comment

In a world where even cooking shows have been gamified, why not psychopathic murder? In Guns Akimbo, from director Jason Lei Howden, such is the world of SKIZM, a streaming underground game in which contestants advance to the next level by killing their opponent. People around the world watch this in real time.

For nerdy Miles (Daniel Radcliffe), this offers an opportunity to troll the comment section of the site, commenting on the pathetic life reflected in watching such “sport”. But when the game’s controller Riktor (Ned Dennehy) takes offense, he and his cohort come to Miles’s apartment, drug him and bolt pistols onto both his hands. Miles is now the newest player in SKIZM and the reigning champion Nix (Samara Weaving) will be his opponent.

Miles is definitely over his head. First of all, consider what it’s like to try to get dressed with your hand bolted to guns. Consider the difficulty in trying to urinate. (Yes, that is kind of the slapstick this film utilizes.) Once he begins to run, he is ridiculed by the online community watching this. They can see his incompetence and know he’ll be killed off soon. But as Nix and Miles have a running battle, he manages to survive. (It should be pointed out that although she is an efficient killing machine, while chasing Miles, Nix shoots with the precision of a Star Wars stormtrooper.) To further incentivize Miles (as if surviving isn’t enough), Riktor kidnaps Miles’s ex-girlfriend (Natasha Liu Bordizzo) with whom he is trying to reconcile.

All this becomes a cross between The Truman Show, The Purge, and your favorite blood-and-gore first-person shooter video game. It is designed as a comic action movie, but it never quite achieves a level of parody of the nihilism that is represented in The Purge and video games.

The film is not without social commentary. It does critique the current obsession with turning everything into a contest. And at times it takes issue with how we live our lives through screens. But all of that is buried beneath the constant and graphic violence. That violence never really leads anywhere—except to more violence. That means that there is no real redemption that takes place within the characters. In fact, in the end, Miles, although changed through this trial in his life, is not changed for the better. His mission at the end of the film need not be applauded. Rather he seems to have succumbed to the very nihilism that propelled SKIZM.

Photos courtesy of Saban Films.

The Transfiguration – A Different Kind of Vampire Story

by Leave a Comment

The Transfiguration is a different kind of vampire movie. But then it’s not really a vampire movie because we don’t have any of the undead who cannot stand the sun and are killed with a stake. Rather we have a disturbed teen who is obsessed with vampires and sees the world as a place where vampires should exist.

Milo (Eric Ruffin) is a loner who is fascinated by all things to do with vampires. He lives in a crime-ridden projects area. His parents are dead and he lives with his older brother. For Milo vampires represent power in his powerless world. He is obsessed with wildlife videos of animals killing and eating their pray. And, we learn soon, Milo acts out his vampire fixation by killing people and feeding on their blood.

Then he meets Sophie (Chloe Levine), a white teen who also lives in the projects with her grandfather. These two young people tentatively establish a relationship. For Sophie, vampires are what she knows from the Twilight series. She views it all with a bit of romanticism. But Milo has a much darker view of vampires and of life. A key discussion between them has to do with whether a vampire could commit suicide. The issues of power and eternal life create conflicts in how Milo sees vampires—and himself.

This is not the kind of film where two different people show each other new ways of dealing with the world and everything becomes sunny. That of course would be one of Sophie’s stories. Rather this film has a nihilist bent. Milo has faced difficult times in his life. Perhaps his focus on vampires grows out of his need to feel power. Certainly vampires are often used to represent being an outsider. Even though he seeks to act like a vampire, he is also troubled by what he does. This inevitably leads to an ending that is as dark as Milo’s own view of life.

Because the film’s central character is African American, it adds an additional level of powerlessness onto Milo’s life. We see others in the film who seek power through gang activity. To them Milo is a “freak”. Yet in many ways they have more in common than we might suspect. Both are seeking a way to live in a world that they see having no hope of anything better. Both survive through preying on others. And in the end they are doomed through the choices they make.

Photos courtesy of Strand Releasing

The Duel – Spiritual Captivity in the Old West

by Leave a Comment

“The river doesn’t speak. It only divides: the light from the dark, life and death.”

072B4284.CR2

The Duel, set in the wild Texas of the late nineteenth century, boils down to a battle between darkness and light, between good and evil. David Kingston (Liam Hemsworth), a young Texas Ranger, is sent by the governor to go undercover in a town near the Rio Grande to investigate a series of disappearances and murders of Mexicans that threatens to create an international incident. He takes his wife Marisol (Alice Braga) along. The town is presided over by Abraham, aka The Preacher (Woody Harrelson), a charismatic (and Charismatic) leader who dresses in white and holds the town in thrall. He is also the man who killed David’s father twenty-two years earlier in a hand-to-hand duel.

While The Preacher has a reputation for healing, he is played by Harrelson as creepy, even when he is being friendly to David and Marisol when they arrive in town. He immediately makes David the town sheriff, perhaps as a way of keeping him in town. Soon he has set his sights on Marisol, seeking to bring her into his fold. The two men know from the start that they will eventually have to face off. But the steps they go through before their final showdown make this more of a psychological thriller than a typical Western.

Although David has the law and right on his side, the border between good and evil in this battle wanders and winds much as the river does. David may seem to have come to terms with his father’s death, but how can this possibly not become personal—especially when Abraham had designs on his wife? Yet, through it all, David manages to keep his mission in mind. When the time comes for him to put an end to the great evil being perpetrated by Abraham and the town, David seeks to set free those who are held captive in various ways.

BCH_7385.CR2

The idea of captivity is important to the film, although it often seems to be operating in the background. There are physical captives, but there are also emotional spiritual captives. These later forms are perhaps even more dangerous that the physical imprisonment of some. It is in this that the film portrays evil. Evil is not acts of violence (although it may involve that). The true evil is the spiritual captivity The Preacher exercises over people. That evil is often manifested in racism, hatred, fear, and violence, but all of that is undergirded by the spiritual captivity. When we see many of the same troubles in the world around us, it is easy to limit the term “evil” to those ills. It may help us to remember that those manifestations are all built on foundations that threaten to hold us all captive to the evil around us.

Photos courtesy of Lionsgate Premiere