Rating: 3/5
Michael watches a video of his best friend, Chris, ranting, shooting guns, and breaking down in a rural area. The video is accompanied by a map with a marker for Chris’s location. Michael wants to find Chris and help him, but his wife, Jennifer, thinks it’s a terrible idea.
Michael arrives to find Chris ranting and shooting at birds. They sit and talk for a bit. Chris hits his crack pipe. Michael asks Chris to let him take Chris to rehab for a week. Chris refuses, citing that he loves his life as it is. So, Michael subdues Chris with a stun gun, chain cuffs Chris to a pipe, and enforces a cold turkey detox on Chris.
As Michael spends time with Chris, he wanders around the area, finding strange items and meeting a cast of unusual characters. Each item tells a story with a fucked up ending. What do they mean? How does it all tie together?
The film is more comedy than horror for most of its runtime. While Michael is out finding stuff, Chris is going through withdrawal and gives zero fucks about Michael’s experience. In that way, the film has a meta quality, where it feels like the detox house is where the characters discuss the movie they’re in. It also reflects the characters who don’t like their life, looking for something to change it — Chris, through crack, and Michael, through helping Chris.
Humans are storytelling creatures. It’s how we make sense of the infinite. From creation myths to that asshole who cut me off on the way to the grocery store, the moment it leaves internal experience and comes out, I transmute it through story. Artists put on themselves the idea that they must tell these stories through their art or capture some essence that transcends the story. But every story has a beginning, middle, and end.
Making a movie about that is fascinating in concept but not always the most interesting to watch. That said, if you can remain open and curious, the movie has some compelling ideas. I wouldn’t call it a horror movie, though.
And that’s a wrap on Hooptobers! I missed 11 last year, but looking at the criteria made me want to claw my eyes out, so I probably won’t be doing them anymore. But they were a satisfying way to negotiate the endless stream of horror movies on my watchlist.