'Weirdsville' review

Rating: **1/2 out of ****

Remember the day when disposing of dead hookers was easy? No? Well, the characters in Allan Moyle’s’ new film ‘Weirdsville’ don’t seem to either, as they have quite the difficult time doing so. I suppose we can’t be too hard on them. Before the night’s out, they’ll encounter Satan worshipers, mafia enforcers and medieval midgets (sorry if that’s politically incorrect but the alliteration is priceless).

‘Weirdsville’ stars Scott Speedman as Dex, an introspective stoner who has recently quit the junk. One night he gets a call from his friend Royce (Wes Bentley), the so called ‘idea man’ of his troupe (his ‘ideas’ include ‘Spray-onnaise’, a spray on mayonnaise). It seems that Royce has a dead hooker in his living room and needs Dex’s help disposing of it. It turns out that the dead hooker is their friend Matilda (Taryn Manning). Unfortunately, for Dex and Royce, Matilda has overdosed on the crystal meth that they have stolen from a gangster named Omar. Now they must dispose of this body while trying to get Omar his money by morning. Things get even more out of control when they discover Satanists performing a ritual sacrifice right where they were going to bury the body. That’s how ‘Weirdsville’ unfolds. Its story is a series of dominoes - each toppling in a row, revealing more and more plot, characters and bizarre situations. Part of the fun of a movie like this is how said events unfold and so I will only reveal as much as is necessary to accurately review the film.

The problem with ‘Weirdsville’ is that it is not as clever as the writer Willem Wennekers would like to believe. Though it gets points for originality, I found myself rarely caring what was taking place or what happened to these characters. They merely occupy the space as opposed to taking the audience on a journey with them. I’m not even sure that the journey would be very interesting, since the leaders of it seem to care less than we do. These characters react very blandly to events that should be exciting or horrifying, like multiple dead bodies or running from murderers. That slacker mentality must be ingrained deep in them, as they don’t even attempt to subdue their would-be captors when they have each other and their captors are half their size and only have a knife. The captors for that matter don’t ever seem too concerned with finding Dex and Royce, even though they are eyewitnesses to a murder. It seems more like an inconvenience for them. Everyone in the film seems very apathetic about everything, and not with the same sense of self-indulgent glee that someone like Brett Easton Ellis writes his characters as having.

Dex is introduced as the kind that wants to change his life. He has reoccurring visions that play as warnings he would be wise to heed. Yet he relapses at the drop of hat, doing nothing to stop himself and starting his cycle over. Royce is the kind that enjoys his life of drugs and little else, and that’s fine. However, he and Matilda vow to go clean for no other reason than to go clean. True, in life, being sober is enough. In fiction though, going clean for clean’s sake isn’t. We need a reason to hope these characters get clean and succeed. I’m afraid that reason isn’t given, or maybe it just isn’t enough.

In the end, we haven’t really learned much about these people; little has changed. The hope of change is tacked on, and it feels just that. And of course, the night culminates into the inevitable conclusion we’ve seen a thousand times before – where all the characters, good and bad, conveniently end up in the same place at the same time. Tony Scott has done this same scenario many times over, all of which are far more fun and interesting than this.

‘Weirdsville’ falls in with so many other films like it where the heroes pursue their MacGuffin deep into the night, stringing along a chain of events that will eventually conclude before last call. If this kind of plot sounds familiar, it is. This has been carried out in countless other films of its kind, and with more skill and more fun. The film works, I guess, on its own level. It just seems to try too hard and yet not hard enough at the same time. It contains scenes and stories that are aptly bizarre and yet there is really nothing here that distinguishes itself from every other film it’s trying to be. Like it’s two main characters, the film seems very happy taking the middle of the road and doing just enough to get by.