The road to Halloween is paved with good films. Wherein we countdown to the spirited season with a hundred doses of horror. 2 days to go.
So Babak Anvari follows up his debut masterwork Under the Shadow with another dark bout of strange going-ons. This time in New Orleans, the terrors again build slowly from the abstract netherverse, that torment a troubled soul under his own four walls. And beyond. A hugely anticipated film given the immense impression Under the Shadow made on me. Go ahead, take it away Mr Anvari.
The rumbles of ambient sounds / score help put you on edge throughout in Wounds. And let me emphasize ‘throughout’. Yes, so consistently executed are those audio cues that I began gradually wanting to wound myself in some way. I even considered refreshing Netflix and watching the film muted. No, seriously. I mean, the sound design of Under the Shadow was one of it uniquely chilling components. In Wounds, it seems like they tested the droning music in some of the early scenes, and simply hit ‘loop’ inside of ‘stop’. Honest mistake.
Read More from the Road to Halloween: Under the Shadow
Okay, let’s look at another angle of the horror concept. Wounds is riddled with cockroaches, a great creepy signifier of the genre’s ability to get you scratching your arms and hair – maybe even goosebumps. The little cretins are trickling about in the protagonist’s bar, at his home, and in an oddly timed moment as he is driving and the phone he is holding suddenly wears a case made of cockroaches.
So essential to the story, the cockroaches even devour the house in the film’s final scene. So much so they eventually block our actual view of the film by crawling all over the fucking lens. And when I say ‘final scene’, I mean that was it. The end. It’s not a gut-punch, it’s not what you expect in any good way, it’s not even a head-scratcher. That kind of outbreak of the crunchy pests was probably were Anvari yelled ‘Cut!’. Of course muffled by the amount of filthy critters on his face. Yeah, bet you wish you were in your Iranian basement now waiting out air raids and the Djinn.
Speaking of gin. Please, that pun and segway has more guts that those in Wounds. The main character, Will, played by big-voiced Armie Hammer (not the toothpaste), spends his days pretending he is working in a bar. You know, grabbing beer bottles with one had, cleaning a glass now and then – not to mention the swing-and-foul-balling of a cockroach from a spirits bottle. Idiot.
I even considered, in that awkwardly long opening scene, that Will was passive flirting with Alicia (Zazie Beetz) by flicking a giant bug her way. We’ve all dropped spiders into the hair of the girl we loved, right? Will could have been an ordinary guy, with his lovely home, gorgeous girlfriend, and job were he can drink for free and snort cocaine. But that’s irrelevant apparently. He leers at Alicia whenever he can, and in the end he appears to be her stalker. Okay, but does it serve the plot? Well there is not much of a plot, but, no, it does not.
Read More from the Road to Halloween: Ex Machina
The films sets up in Rosie’s Bar, where Will chats aimlessly with Alicia and her new boyfriend (Karl Glusman). So new in fact, feels like she just brought him in off the street for this specific scene to make Will green with envy. The great barman that he is, Will then allows underage students to order four beers – even after checking their Disneyclub ID. And then a vicious brawl, leaving Eric (Brad William Henke) with a broken bottle shaped hole in his face – which Will attempts to halt with the same amount of urgency used by the security of the toll booths were Sonny Corleone was gunned down.
So Will finds a girlie phone left by one of the mysterious kids – the unsettling music at the first kid’s arrival at the bar tells us so. Rather than drop it in lost and found, Will takes the phone home to be greeted soon after by messages from a pleading Garrett and some rather grotesque images. Probably just some fucking nerd who loves doing special effects, I thought, then Will said. Only because I was yet to be convinced this was a viable horror film. I’ll give it to Will though, holding the phone at an angle to see the finger-marks, thus establishing the lock pattern, was a moment of detective work I have never seen on film – and hope to never again.
Sarcastic, whimsical tone aside – from me, not the movie – Wounds is devoid of any real meaning or development. I am not even sure how this film can function on its own in today’s society. There was promise early on, a little bit, but the unsettling soon became the amusing. By the last act I was laughing or shaking my head or cussing as I regularly do to the latest John Travolta, Nic Cage, Bruce Willis efforts.
Read More from the Road to Halloween: Paranormal Activity
Armie Hammer is utterly convincing, though, in his performance as an arrogant prick. And not many actresses do itty-bitty pants and T-shirt like Dakota Johnson. As pointless as Carrie is, Johnson is perfectly fine here, earning herself more pocket money for telling Will what we’re feeling and not giving two fucks when he wants to break up. Can you blame her? He’s a mock person, just a body, I thought, and then she said.
Wounds really does add salt to itself by continuing to exist, even in its 90 minute duration. Granted, Babak Anvari shows a lot of artistry through his already proven filmmaking ability, but his talent is wasted here. I’ve not read the novella by Nathan Ballingrud, ‘The Visible Filth’, which the film is based on, but only desperately want to do so to try and figure out what Anvari’s intentions were here. His dialogue, however much is his own creativity, is contrived, over-stretched and reminiscent of the leftovers from Dawson’s Creek episodes that never made the air.
The aforementioned ‘break-up’ scene was coldly entertaining. Carrie eating her cereal and stomping on a bug while the unshaven, zombified Will has seemingly turned to crumbling stone. An earlier interaction between the two, when she asks him where he got the phone, is strangely quiescent: “Some chick at the bar.” That’ll help any potential jealousy, Will. Next time, try not to arouse unnecessary suspicion. So when Carrie asks again, more concerned I might add: “Some chick at the bar.” Sheesh!
Read More from the Road to Halloween: Jennifer Lawrence in mother!
Unlike Under the Shadow, Wounds plunges popular horror tropes to their death. So nonsensical and cringe-worthy are some of the paper-thin plot devices, you end up being too tuned out for any of the alluring suspense to stick. I mean, sinister text messages and researching via the internet are shown to be worn out methods of the modern era. The darkened, spiraling tunnel that turns Carrie blue is as haunting as leaving the screensaver on your desktop while you’re asleep circa 2005. And those CGI cockroaches, even more dated.
Fair to say, given the filmmaker’s debut, this was a disappointment. Technically on a par with M. Night Shyamalan – which phase of his plummeting career I have not assigned as yet. I wasn’t expecting a bang, I would certainly have settled for an intense whimper.
As Heart of Darkness author Joseph Conrad once said: “It had whispered to him things about himself which he did not know, things of which he had no conception… and the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating. It echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core.” A quote which aligns my point as much as it does give s coherent landscape to the movie, Wounds, when it opens with it.
