(Sorry for the lack of photos, it's not letting me for some reason)
A lot of people hate Kevin Smith. They hate his sense of humor, they hate his podcasts, they hate his movies, they hate everything about him. I have always been giving him somewhat of a pass, even though his last few movies have been hit or miss. Clerks, Chasing Amy, and Dogma are awesome. I found some stuff to like in Mallrats, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, Clerks 2, and Zack and Miri Make a Porno. Jersey Girl is pretty mediocre, and Cop Out is abysmal, easily his worst film and maybe one of the worst comedies ever made. I think he realized that his grasp on comedy is starting to slip and he should move on to something else. That's why I found Red State so intriguing, and while it has major flaws, I still enjoyed it for what it was. And it made me genuinely excited to see his newest film Tusk. I couldn't because it came out just as school was starting, so I had to wait until it was available to rent. I payed 6 bucks to watch it on demand, prepared for the best, and an hour and forty minutes later I was trying to decide whether or not to smash my head into a brick wal repeatedly.
When a podcaster named Wallace (Justin Long) travels to Canada to interview somebody, he winds up crossing paths with a strange man named Howard Howe (Michael Parks) who wants to tell stories about his life. The man proceeds to drug Wallace and begins a torturous procedure on him that will end with Wallace being transformed into a walrus.
If that sounds stupid to you now, it gets stupider when you watch the actual movie. If you watch the trailers, there are some things that are left out that you need to know in order to understand how strange this film is. It is a horror/comedy, and I can think of a number of films that know how to effectively blend the two (Shaun of the Dead, The Evil Dead Trilogy, Cabin in the Woods, Scream) to create a fun experience. Tusk is a slop of two different genres that could blend together well if it was being handled by someone who actually knew what they were doing. The movie starts out as a comedy, with Wallace and his fellow podcaster Teddy (Haley Joel Osment) watching a video of a kid that they call the Kill Bill Kid (expect a lawsuit from the Star Wars Kid at some point soon) accidentally cut off his own leg. I thought the kid did that effect at first because it looked so fake. But when Wallace goes to interview the kid, it turns out that the kid actually has cut off his own leg and has since committed suicide. It ends up throwing you for such a loop that it completely takes you out of the movie. And we're only 10 minutes into the movie!
After Wallace arrives to Howes' house, that's when the movie becomes interesting. The cinematography manages to convey a sense of mood without being too stylized, and Parks is simply phenomenal. He manages to go back and forth between being the charming old man with a number of fascinating stories to tell and the psychopath with a sick obsession with walruses very effectively. And it actually ends up becoming very horrifying, particularly scenes when Walrus attempts to call for help or when the two of them sit down for dinner together. But just when it seems like the movie is beginning to be worth it, the third act begins.
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First of all, notice how during that summary of the plot, I forgot to mention that Johnny Depp is in the movie. And that's because in addition to being completely pointless, he is when the movie begins to spiral downward Hindenberg-style. His character is a Quebec French detective who has been hunting down Howe for years. And there are a number of things wrong with this character, but I'll focus on the main three. 1. Depp's accent seems to slip between French, Spanish, Italian, German, and British almost every nanosecond. 2. It's Johnny Depp doing yet another wacky character with a weird accent. And 3. He has a flashback scene where he confronts Howe, and Howe seems to be responding to Depp's goofiness in the worst way possible. The stuff they are saying to each other is not funny, and while I checked the time and saw that the scene lasted somewhere between 5 and 10 minutes, it feels like it's going on for an hour. It's easily the most cringe-worthy scene I've seen in any film not just this year, but maybe in the past couple.
And now for the grand finale, the actual walrus. Howes goes through with the procedure and turns Wallace into a walrus. At first he is in the dark, so while you can't see him, but you can hear him screaming. And at first is it genuinely terrifying. But once the lights come on and you see the walrus, it looks like they just shoved Justin Long into a beanbag that looks like it was stitched together with leftovers from a meat-packing plant. You can clearly see the seems in the rubber and you are never convinced that he is actually a walrus.
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So, overall, I'm somewhat conflicted. As unbelievably god-awful as this film is, I somewhat recommend it. Mainly because this is such a fascinating failure that I genuinely believe it should be shown in film classes for studying on how not to do a horror movie. A messy slop of half-thought out ideas, Tusk is a strong case that maybe Kevin Smith should not be making movies anymore.
I give Tusk 2 out of 10 flippers.
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