Where there are wild things, there will be suspense. This week’s column focuses on a pair of movies about two sets of beastly, fearsome, bickering beings and how they deal with the introduction of a sole unexpected alpha-visitor into their tight-woven clan. However, the nature of that visitor varies dramatically. In “Where The Wild Things Are,” it’s Max, a troubled and distracted, but good-hearted boy who’s run away from home and falsely claims to have magical powers. And in “Sorority Row,” it’s a serial killer.
“Sorority Row” is a film about the consequences of being a bitch. After pulling a prank at a house party that leads to the death of one of the Theta Pi seniors, the participating sisters conspire to cover up the events of the night as a drunken mysterious accident. But eight months later, a mysterious masked murderer shows up and starts picking off the girls one by one using the same weaponized tire iron that killed their friend.
Like every slasher film, “Sorority Row” lays on the suspense early and often. Unfortunately, despite the standard musical swells and staccatos and the use of intentionally vague camera angles followed by sharp cuts to frightened faces, there was a missing link, without which it was hard to even pay attention, let alone be drawn in by the plot.
The story is ostensibly a whodunit. The senator father of Jessica’s (Leah Pipes, “The Deep End”) boyfriend who needs a clean record for his vice presidential vetting? Jessica herself? The high-school sister of the deceased? The icy housemother looking to protect her investment? Garret (Matt O’Leary, “Live Free or Die Hard”), who was the original subject of the cruel prank? His sister? Her psychologist?
“Sorority Row” suffers from three basic problems. First, there are too many possibilities for the viewer to form an all-important suspect short-list. Second, the film ignores basic horror movie rules about the order in which characters are killed off, sacrificing build-up for stylized violence, like when a bottle of champagne is shoved neck-first down into a girl’s mouth, cutting her throat and causing blood to gurgle up in the bottle. And last, none of the characters are sympathetic or identifiably human in the least, which makes it weirdly easy to shrug off their deaths and watch with total detachment.
You know a movie is in bad shape when it steals arguably the most famous suspense scene in motion picture history, wastes it on a cheap shock, messes up the pacing and finally drains the whole thing of any meaning by having the payoff be the death of an insignificant role player. That’s right, in a passage more painful than a tire-iron to the sternum, director Stewart Hendler (“Seeds”) has the gall to adapt the showercide scene for his own purposes in what could be the most disrespectful homage in horror movie history.
If “Sorority Row” had an eighth of the suspense of Hitchcock’s “Psycho,” it would be in better shape. But it can’t clear even that short hurdle, since every actor plays a meaningless caricature. The movie is an all around mess, but ultimately the scariest thing about the entire enterprise is that such a trite script was green-lighted and produced without the slightest trace of art or humor.
On the opposite end of the spectrum is “Where the Wild Things Are,” a film that uses suspense sparingly but infinitely more effectively than “Sorority Row.” Part of that is the more experienced directorial hand of Spike Jonze, who has proven his bona fides in such movies as “Adaptation” and “Being John Malkovich.” But a far greater degree of the movie’s success is due to Jonze’s script adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s beloved children’s book of the same name.
Jonze, whose writing credits before “Where the Wild Things Are” consisted only of a few music videos and the “Jackass” movies and TV show, crafts a delicate fantastical universe and thoroughly convinces the viewer to emotionally invest in the fate of Max, the Wild Things and humanity.
After biting his mother in a fit of defiant childish anger, Max (Max Records, “The Brothers Bloom”) runs away from home, finds a boat and launches off shore, inadvertently setting course for a land inhabited by reckless, bickering Wild Things. Seizing on their gullibility, Max takes the route popularized by early European explorers and claims possession of powers beyond their comprehension. Skeptically, the Wild Things name him king and ask him to “keep out the sadness” that plagues their existence.
Jonze builds drama through his schizophrenic pacing, which mirrors Max’s own perplexed thoughts. Instead of drawing out an argument scene between Wild Things, Jonze gets it over with as quickly as possible, cutting away to the next problem King Max must face. It’s soon clear that without the magical powers Max has fabricated, it may be impossible to solve all the problems the Wild Things create.
As the web of lies grows, so does concern for the protagonist. Can Max bring the Wild Things together? Will they eat him up if he doesn’t? Will he be able to keep any friends in the endeavor? These questions seem mundane when compared to the higher stakes for which “Sorority Row” plays, but in practice they’re much more emotionally captivating. The suspense in “Where the Wild Things Are” may center on a stubborn boy and his childish imaginings, but here’s the difference: We actually care.
Lin Weeks is a sophomore majoring in finance and marketing. Upset with his omission of the DVD you were most excited about renting this week? Vent at [email protected].
