Shockheaded (2004)

Posted on Nov 30, 2005 under "Hot", Action-suspense |

Written and directed by Eric Thornett
Starring
- Jason Wauer
- Mr. ?
- Demetrius Parker, Sr.
- Eric Thornett
- Debbie Rochon

Many microbudget filmmakers seek to rise no further than the level of simple titillation and exploitation, using the camera as a crude recorder of crude events. Some few honestly attempt to portray a dramatic narrative via the medium of film; some fewer even succeed at that. But it’s a very rare breed indeed who speak the language of cinema, and whose storytelling vocabulary thus takes advantage of the audiovisual strengths unique to a narrative motion picture.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Eric Thornett.

Shockheaded, like Thornett’s previous feature 23 Hours (2000), takes place in “Fifth City,” an urban environment strongly informed by hardboiled and noir archetypes (not unlike Frank Miller’s Sin City in parentage). Both movies follow a good-hearted Everyman caught in bewildering circumstances; both are saturated with a stylized paranoia which predates and outlasts the events of the plot (thus the reuse of the common setting). But whereas 23 Hours was a frenetic chase film, breathless in its quest to keep the hero alive, Shockheaded is a quieter film, relying more on constant undercurrents of dread than imminent threats; it is, for all that, fully as paranoid a film as its precedent, a concentrated paranoia that borders on (and sometimes steps boldly into) surrealism.

“Can’t look away. Nope. Turn my back, and the wallpaper’ll get me.”

Because nomenclature is destiny, our protagonist is a man without a past named Noble (Jason Wauer), a hard-drinking, chain-smoking tenant newly moved into a seedy live-in hotel where the daisy-bedecked wallpaper is the sole mocking visual symbol of brightness and life. His room holds more significance than merely the wallpaper, though; its previous tenant vacated only a week ago under hushed circumstances, and is currently being sought by an array of mysterious persons. Two nattily-dressed crime enforcers (Demetrius Parker, Sr. and Pete Smak) want her because of a shady debt come due; a sepulchral figure in dark glasses and an umbrella identified only as “the empty man” (and credited only as “Mr. ?”) is less forthcoming in identifying his motives, but makes up for it with an odd clairvoyance toward the unsettling dreams that have beset Noble since his move-in: Dreams of a castle, and a man in a white mask. And despite his desires to keep out of other people’s business, Noble finds himself at the epicenter of the dreamlike happenings when he sees a pirate fetish porn TV signal take over his set — a signal which includes scenes by the girl everyone’s seeking (Debbie Rochon, in a wig that’s fooling no one), and rare glimpses of that same masked man from his dreams.

Noble remains something of a cipher, but he carries enough time-tested mannerisms — the drinking, the smoking, the latent smart-aleckiness of his every comment — to identify him as the heir of the hardboiled hero, a knight in tarnished armor who can’t keep himself from doing what’s right. But in the circumstances in which he finds himself, “what’s right” is almost a nonsensical question.

“I had days like that, too — then I found out about new Clearasil Extra-Plus!”

I’m trying to find synonyms for “stylized” to use throughout this review, because one can’t comment on the movie without making mention of that fact consistently. Fifth City is a construct of thought and ambience, fully as artificial in its own way as any setting in The Matrix (1999) or Dark City (1998); it’s a milieu in which pirate TV signals take over scarred television sets with rotary dials, a milieu in which flamboyant underworld figures meet in darkened parking garages to exchange videocassettes of bondage porn (how quaint) while flashing samurai swords. There are hats and ties right out of Philip Marlowe’s closet, sharing screen space with designer drugs and DVD-Rs. And somehow, it all fits, it meshes into a seductive setting that convinces of its depth while parading its contrivance.

If there’s any one element which contributes to the movie’s success, it is Thornett’s staggering sense of visual storytelling. The camera is not merely a passive recorder of staged events; it is a conspirator, telling us forcefully what we shall see and how we shall see it. Scenes of quiet and unstated dread, which would in another movie be the sinkholes of plot momentum, here become the wound mainsprings of tension through composition and motion. Accompanying the visuals are examples of sound design that are almost perfect in conception, with the undertoned sound of the city itself breathing beneath the stunningly powerful score by Jason Russler.

“Rain? No, it’s pigeons that scare me.”

This is, unfortunately, a movie in which the main weaknesses come directly from resources or the lack thereof. Actors often prove less than able to carry their lines believably; while flamboyance can cover for much, as in the case of Thornett’s own role as the sword-flashing pornographer Normal, the roles which require more understated performances often come across as underwhelming. Wauer as Noble is required to carry a part with more internalized quietus than he can convincingly portray, and whenever he opens his mouth it’s clear that he’s not talking, he’s delivering lines. (And let’s not speak much of the mask-obsessed dream-room denizen, who is as ferocious an anti-actor as I’ve seen in many a day.)

Technical aspects, too, show the shallowness of the budget. Scenes whose lighting was meant to be moody too often end up murky instead; and while the sound design is nigh perfect in conception, in execution a crucial line here or there is buried beneath ambient noises and the score.

“Whaddaya mean, ‘MORE noir’? I’m noiring as hard as I can!”

And then there’s the treatment of pornography itself. This is not a movie which set out to be exploitative, and thus much work went into ensuring that the portrayals of porn to be had are not themselves prurient. But this also means that much of the appeal of this dark underground pornography to its aficionados goes unexamined; it’s a bunch of grimy-looking stripteases with healthy dollops of mysogyny. The movie bizarrely goes to great lengths to avoid revealing Debbie Rochon’s breasts, before then reversing them and showing them, not as the payoff of some great buildup, but simply in the course of one of her scenes. It’s a puzzling creative decision, and in the hands of any less meticulous director I would conclude that it wasn’t a conscious decision at all, but simply an aimless happening.

Ultimately, “surreal” is a synonym for “intentionally doesn’t make sense”; despite the revelations of the climactic scenes, there are still elements which are left wholly unexplained, as well as plot threads whose explanations seem even more bewildering than our unanswered questions. It’s a maddening and intriguing film, very able to engage and entice, but unwilling to stop to connect dots for those who can’t keep up.

There was going to be a funny caption here, but UPS lost the package. Pfft.

According to the Piranha Pictures website, there is a third entry in the pseudo-series, simply entitled Fifth City, which completed principal photography four years ago; there’s no further mention of completion. I hope that it exists, somewhere out there in the ether; after the thoughtful and engaging two entries already finished, I can only look forward to a third installment with the mature, seasoned movie reviewer’s version of giddy joy.