I'm glad I didn't dive right into a review for today's film, since stewing on it the rest of the day not only got me through work, but I've actually grown to like it more as a result!
WEEK TWO - GROWING PAINS
October 10
Excision's opening scene does a lot to either dissuade you or persuade you into what the film is selling: after a cold title appearance, we see double of our film's protagonist, Pauline. One of them is sputtering blood and is poised to explode into a graphic mess; the other is writhing in her chair in orgasmic glee. Both are looking straight at each other, so there's a feeling that they're both feeding into their respective positions: the bloody Pauline is vomiting blood at the sight of the sexual gesticulations of the one sitting across from her, and the climaxing Pauline is getting off on the violence that's in front of her. Who started it? What came first? Who do we identify with? Who is the real Pauline? These are questions that go unanswered when Pauline, the real Pauline, wakes up in her bedroom, and it becomes just another day in the family household.
Excision is one of "those" kinds of films, the ones that get to be difficult, off-putting, cringe-worthy, transgressive, unapologetic, disgusting, unsettling, and, through it all, pretty goddamned brilliant by the time the credits roll and you're starting to reflect on it. It's remarkable that this is writer/director Richard Bates, Jr.'s first film, because it feels like the culmination of an entire career spent on other projects that were building to this film. Excision is a sharply written, confidently directed, well acted, beautiful piece of grotesque that doesn't come along very often.
It's always a gutsy decision to spend a movie on an inherently unlikable character, and it's really hard to picture one as deeply toxic as Pauline. She has nothing but naked contempt for her mother, constantly challenges and embarrasses her teachers, plays her fellow students against one another for her personal gain, and has suffers delusions of grandeur of being one of the finest surgeons to hopefully debut in the profession. She's obsessed with the sanguinary nature of things, particularly where it's least hygienic (word of warning: this film may put you off cunnilingus forever), and finds her sexual fantasies in where she is both patient and practitioner, experimenting with all sorts of alien medical procedures. Her only ray of sunshine is her affection for her sickly sister, and it's not entirely clear if it's entirely for her sister's sake. Yet Pauline is always compelling to watch, thanks to Bates, Jr's writing and AnnaLynne McCord's tremendous performance. McCord's supermodel good looks are all but eradicated for the film, as both the acne-ridden real world Pauline, and the otherworldly, inhuman Pauline of her sexual fantasies, and the film relies on McCord's quick wit and physical presence, and she digs right into the material unlike many I've seen on the screen. If she ever got material this good in a mainstream film, she'd be showered with awards. Alas, those kinds of films don't take kindly at less squeamish moments involving looking at a very bloody tampon in awe, and certainly not with McCord's dedication. Also impressive, and I can assure you that such words would have never entered my mind for her acting talent until this film, is Traci Lords as Pauline's mother, Phyllis. Her domineering matriarch is wholly believable, and manages to keep up with the dark directions that her dialogue goes in without missing a single beat. She goes tit for tat with McCord effortlessly, selling their combative relationship, but also carrying a lining of profound sorrow at not only her failure to raise Pauline, but of her own troubled upbringing. Even her victories, few as they are, feel like defeats.
The rest of the cast does solid work as well, but if there is a complaint I must make about the film, it's that it gets a little too guest-star-happy after a bit. I could take John Waters, especially in a surprisingly straight role, and I can also buy into Marlee Matlin's small role, as she manages to get one of the best lines in the film without ever uttering it, but you do start to get distracted when Malcom McDowell shows up as Pauline's grumpy math teacher, and you wander straight into "OK, movie, that's enough now" when the principal turns out to be Ray Wise. It's not so much that they play their parts poorly, but that it feels like the film is straining for some kind of credibility by having such familiar cult film actors show up. It's an unfortunate misstep, but only a minor one.
Excision is not an easy film to like, and it will assuredly alienate the hell out of a lot of people who do watch it. For those who are willing to invest in it, however, it is one of the strongest psychological horror films I've ever seen, and it's one that will stay with me for quite some time.
October 11 preview: Proving that no concept is too obscure for horror films to wander into, we find a double feature of coming-of-age horror films that center around holes in the ground. In
The Pit, the wrong kind of little boy comes across a pit full of hungry monsters that he sees fit to use for his own purposes. And in
Jug Face, a pregnant teen's situation gets a hell of a lot more complicated when she's next in line to be sacrificed to a mysterious pit in the forest that surrounds the small, insular community that she's a part of.
