There is a bewhiskered story of an old actor on his deathbed surrounded by relatives and friends. "Oh, this is so hard," said one onlooker. "Nah," said the thesp, "dying is easy. Comedy is hard." Horror comedy is especially hard because the tropes of horror - well-worn as they are - often provoke laughter when they are intended to shock or chill. Most horror comedy is tepid stuff, managing to achieve limited success in either genre. But sometimes they get it right.
Lately, I watched a couple of horror comedies available on streaming that get it right. They're not perfect, but they work as entertainment and have very contrasting approaches. Let's begin with the 'nicer' one...
 |
Freaky is a 2020 movie starring Vince Vaughn and Kathryn Newton and directed by Michael Landon, who also co-wrote with Michael Kennedy. The setup is typical small-town slasher stuff. The Butcher - played by Vaughn - is an immensely strong masked maniac with a big knife. He kills some Typical Dumb Kids at their parents house and then steals a really nice knife which turns out to be a mystical Aztec dagger. Then he attacks Millie (Newton). Instead of killing her, though, the dagger swaps their souls. Both wake up the next morning transposed(?). The Butcher, now perfectly disguised as a teen, sets out to explore possibilities. Millie, now played by Vaughn, tries to make people believe 'she' is not a serial killer.
Yes, it's a horror version of Freaky Friday and very silly in many ways. But Vaughn's portrayal of a high school girl is a delight and Netwon handles well the task of being a suddenly hot girl who easily manipulates others into deadly situations. A scene involving an unpleasant woodwork teacher is especially gory but Butcher/Millie pretty much cuts a swathe through jocks, bitches, and other stereotypes. Meanwhile, Millie/Butcher manages to convince her friends that she is herself and a bit of Googling reveals they have 24 hours to do another stabbing or the swap is permanent. All in all, it's an upbeat, life-affirming kind of movie with massive bloodshed.
Very different is Mom and Dad, Brian Taylor's 2017 black comedy. The central concept here is very, very similar to a story by James Tiptree Jnr, 'The Screwfly Solution'. Aliens (probably) mess with deep-seated human instincts to destroy us the easy way. In Tiptree's story, male aggression against women becomes an ungovernable rage. In Mom and Dad parental emotions are turned against offspring.
The film won some critical praise but audiences didn't really like it. It does subvert the ideal suburban US family in the most brutal way possible. Nicolas Cage and Selma Blair are excellent leads as a bickering, depressed couple whose children are a (fairly standard issue) pair of pains. Mysterious signals through electronic devices trigger a sudden, ungovernable desire among all parents to kill their offspring, and blood-drenched wackiness ensues.
This is an end-of-the-world story that quickly focuses on one family and the kids' desperate struggle to survive the onslaught of Mom and Dad. Cage does some scenery chewing, Blair is more nuanced, and the kids are genuinely sympathetic. Lance Henriksen arrives as grandpa later in the movie to add some extra yucks and ultra-violence.
What elevates Mom and Dad above (say) The Purge franchise is that the rationale is nicely worked out. Parents only attack their own children, the ones they are emotionally tied to, not other people's. This makes for weirdly disturbing scenes, especially at the start of the crisis when the first instinct of children is to run to mommy. There is also a well-handled scene in a maternity ward where the ordeal of a difficult birth is followed by babycidal rage.
Both the above were on Netflix at the time of writing. Some other horror comedies that left a good impression (on me, at any rate) I reviewed earlier. Among them is Tucker and Dave vs. Evil, which I mentioned here. I think this one is another good example of taking the slasher setup and twisting it into a more interesting shape.
No comments:
Post a Comment