While getting ready to write this review, I bopped around the internet to find out a little about Killer Flick writer/director Mark Weidman. He was apparently somewhere in his mid to late 30s when he made this movie. Weidman had no real experience in film except for writing a few scripts that attracted some interest but never made it to production. Somehow, though, he was able to cobble together the financing to make this thing, which never made it out of the film festival circuit and was finally belched out on DVD several years later.
Now, I suppose a lot of people would look at Weidman's story and find it inspiring. He didn't go to film school or even really have a career in filmmaking, yet he was able to persevere and see his dream made into reality. However, anyone who finds something heroic or noble in all that would be very, very wrong. The tale of Mark Weidman and Killer Flick is actually a tragedy. A minor one to be sure, but still tragic. It's story of a guy with little talent and less skill wasting somebody's money and everybody's time creating a worthless piece of cinematic garbage that's now buried like a landmine in our popular culture, waiting for some unsuspecting person to rent it and see their time and hard earned money vanish in an explosion of nearly unwatchable gunk.
This movie is a postmodern, deconstructionist take on independent filmmaking where a troop of aspiring movie makers that look a lot like a Red Hot Chilli Peppers/Soundgarden cover band drive through the dessert filming their violent, criminal rampages. They're on their way to Los Angeles to abduct their favorite B movie actor and force him to be in their production. That doesn't seem like such a terrible concept, does it? It's easy to imagine doing a lot of crazy, fun and provocative stuff with that idea. Unfortunately, you have to imagine it because what Weidman does is stupid, annoying and pretentious.
Weidman tries to pull off a trippy metanarrative where the film these guys are making becomes the film we're watching and becomes the reality they're living. They're both making a movie, living the movie they're making and are aware that they're living the movie they're making. That's what Weidman tries to pull off but because he obviously doesn't understand what he's trying to do, it never amounts to anything. There's really nothing trippy or "meta" about Killer Flick at all. It's just an ordinary, very linear and poorly assembled story where the characters break the 4th wall all the time for no particular purpose.
In fact, the phrase "no particular purpose" applies to just about everything in and about this film. Switching from color to black-and-white, shifting from being a movie to being a movie-within-a movie to being a movie about a movie-within-a-movie, a gay love scene, self-referential commentary about the politics of cinema it all happens randomly and without purpose. It's like this cast and crew got together and filmed weeks and weeks of bad improv where they didn't even remember what they did from hour to hour, then edited it all down to 93 minutes.
We have a habit in America of telling our children that anyone can grow up to be President. That's not true. Not just anyone can be President. Not just anyone should be President. Well, not just anyone should be able to be a filmmaker either, no matter how much they want to. When just anyone can be a filmmaker, punishing dreck like Killer Flick is the result.
Now, I suppose a lot of people would look at Weidman's story and find it inspiring. He didn't go to film school or even really have a career in filmmaking, yet he was able to persevere and see his dream made into reality. However, anyone who finds something heroic or noble in all that would be very, very wrong. The tale of Mark Weidman and Killer Flick is actually a tragedy. A minor one to be sure, but still tragic. It's story of a guy with little talent and less skill wasting somebody's money and everybody's time creating a worthless piece of cinematic garbage that's now buried like a landmine in our popular culture, waiting for some unsuspecting person to rent it and see their time and hard earned money vanish in an explosion of nearly unwatchable gunk.
This movie is a postmodern, deconstructionist take on independent filmmaking where a troop of aspiring movie makers that look a lot like a Red Hot Chilli Peppers/Soundgarden cover band drive through the dessert filming their violent, criminal rampages. They're on their way to Los Angeles to abduct their favorite B movie actor and force him to be in their production. That doesn't seem like such a terrible concept, does it? It's easy to imagine doing a lot of crazy, fun and provocative stuff with that idea. Unfortunately, you have to imagine it because what Weidman does is stupid, annoying and pretentious.
Weidman tries to pull off a trippy metanarrative where the film these guys are making becomes the film we're watching and becomes the reality they're living. They're both making a movie, living the movie they're making and are aware that they're living the movie they're making. That's what Weidman tries to pull off but because he obviously doesn't understand what he's trying to do, it never amounts to anything. There's really nothing trippy or "meta" about Killer Flick at all. It's just an ordinary, very linear and poorly assembled story where the characters break the 4th wall all the time for no particular purpose.
In fact, the phrase "no particular purpose" applies to just about everything in and about this film. Switching from color to black-and-white, shifting from being a movie to being a movie-within-a movie to being a movie about a movie-within-a-movie, a gay love scene, self-referential commentary about the politics of cinema it all happens randomly and without purpose. It's like this cast and crew got together and filmed weeks and weeks of bad improv where they didn't even remember what they did from hour to hour, then edited it all down to 93 minutes.
We have a habit in America of telling our children that anyone can grow up to be President. That's not true. Not just anyone can be President. Not just anyone should be President. Well, not just anyone should be able to be a filmmaker either, no matter how much they want to. When just anyone can be a filmmaker, punishing dreck like Killer Flick is the result.
