Psychopaths (2017)
Several psychopaths wreak havoc over the course of a violent night.
Director:
Mickey KeatingWriter:
Mickey KeatingStars:
Storyline
Several psychopaths wreak havoc over the course of a violent night.
Genres:
HorrorParents Guide:
Add content advisory for parents »Details
Country:
USALanguage:
EnglishRelease Date:
1 December 2017 (USA) See more »Company Credits
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Color:
Color
When Steven Soderbergh
announced he was retiring from cinema, he lamented about watching a
fellow passenger on an airplane watch only the action scenes in a list
of loud movies, skipping the dialogue and stories. The director called
this “mayhem porn,” a designation and ideology fitting for the latest
from indie director Mickey Keating,
“Psychopaths." The film is an active, obnoxious test of an audience’s
appetite for blood and how long they can go without novel ideas like
purpose or plot.
In the history of lazy conceits for mass
violence, “Psychopaths” proudly throws itself towards the bottom. A
serial killer (played by horror icon Larry Fessenden,
who also executive produced) has just been executed, and the evil
within his soul has spread throughout Los Angeles. Not in any direct
visual way, but enough so that this script can focus on violence as a
type of trending topic for the night.
"The Purge"
films, of which “Psychopaths” will owe many of its viewers, nudge that
violence is an epidemic that we choose to embrace. But any idea of
treating "Psychopaths" as a type of commentary on how violence is a
force beyond consciousness is muffled early, as violence becomes an
action to create whatever “Psychopaths” thinks looks cool. Overhead
shots of torture weapons, shadowy long takes of people being shot in
darkness—it’s all just about killing people for the sake of killing
people. Ho hum.
A plot does not materialize so much as
characters of questionable backgrounds and expansive capacities for
violence. In an elegantly composed one-shot, a man is introduced
attacking a woman, strangling her, and killing someone that comes to the
rescue. Played by James Landry Hebert and a distinct mustache, he’s
known as The Strangler, naturally. But the night has other things in
store for him when he meets Blondie (Angela Trimbur), a killer of her own right, with her own stone face and campy desire to torture.
Evil lurks elsewhere in the valley, like in the soul of a singer named Alice (Ashley Bell,
a Keating MVP), who is introduced with a brightly-lit stage performance
of “Let Me Call You Sweetheart.” She turns out to be a psychopath too,
indicated by a schizophrenic, fourth wall-breaking monologue that
fluctuates between her normal voice and one of a demon. Later on, she
attacks a quaint yet quarreling suburban couple. For a movie that
essentially has its production design done by Halloween, her hamminess
is more spirited than most character flourishes here.
And yes, given that this is a movie about psychopaths, there are
some killers in masks, some of their violence involving the weak script
idea of revenge. But as a character shrugs in the script, fitting with
the film's middle school-level interest in wisdom: “There ain’t no why
to evil.”
All this carnage is loosely connected, sometimes with
different attacks spliced back and forth, but the stakes are zilch.
Characters, whether considered to be psychopaths or not, are treated
with the care of blood bags that exist simply to explode, if not before a
menacing soundtrack needle-drop or rambling monologue. For whatever
inspiration “Psychopaths” has, as a type of chaos so pure that it lacks
substance, it drags. To call it an “experiment” would be to acknowledge
that it has a purpose.
“Exercise” might be a better word,
however, as Keating is truly an accomplished composer with the
instruments of filmmaking. There is a precision in framing, color,
lighting, parallel editing and even sound mixing that makes
“Psychopaths” more digestible than its screenplay would suggest.
Whatever the hell is happening on screen or whoever is being cut up or
mutilated, the film is built from dedication.
But unless the ambition of “Psychopaths” is to motivate Michael Haneke to remake “Funny Games”
for a second time, its efforts are gravely misplaced. The self-aware
conceits of Keating’s film get it nowhere, except farther away from
having any major impact. At its best, “Psychopaths” is an empty
rebellion of a genre movie. At its worst, it’s a confounding piece of
shiny trash.
FINAL RATING: 1/10 FOR THE GENRE AND 1/10 OVERALL. PURE TRASH.
Thanks for reading and have fun watching movies.
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