Terror director Robert Rodriguez, he’s written and directed a grindhouse film of his own, The Victim, in which he trades heavily on the unde- niable sexual appeal of his wife Jennifer Blanc and genre babe Danielle Harris. It starts with a tryst gone wrong when a pair
The Tall Man: Let’s scare
Jessica to death.
doctor of a desolate ex-mining town, where an inordinate number of children go missing each year. Some of the townsfolk blame the disappearances on a mythical figure they call – you guessed it – the Tall Man. And after just enough time to introduce some bland characters we’re supposed to care about, Julia’s own young son, David, is taken in the night by a shadowy some- body, which ignites the film’s only im- mersive sequence. Julia chases the kidnapper’s ominous black milk truck, only to be taken prisoner herself, escape shortly thereafter, grapple with her assailant until the truck rolls, and fall into some quicksand (!) as the Tall Man steals off into the night with the boy. At this point, roughly the 50-minute mark, one
might expect Julia and the police to embark upon a feverish search, but – surprise! – the locals aren’t what they seem. Then again, neither is Julia. Just as the movie seems like it’s nearing some kind of conclusion, it drags on for another excruciating 45 minutes of weightless melodrama that only serves to out The Tall Man as a vehicle for Laugier to com- ment upon the plight of children raised in homes plagued by domestic violence – an important mes- sage, but highly misleading in the context of what’s marketed as a horror film. Biel is watchable enough, though even she can’t do much with Laugier’s limp dialogue, and Stephen
McHattie (Pontypool) and William B. Davis (The X-Files) are ren- dered ineffectual in meatless po- lice caricatures. There’s also a mute girl (Jodelle Ferland: The Cabin in the Woods) who occa- sionally narrates (you read that correctly) and a litany of laughably improbable character actions (e.g., Julia gets drunk and falls asleep reading a two-inch thick version of Homer’s Odyssey
’cause, you know, we all curl up with enormous texts once we’re loaded). Unfortunately, this is that special kind of bad film
that can usually only be achieved by studio med- dling. Or maybe Laugier has exhausted his bag of horror tricks so he tried dressing up this poorly de- veloped drama as a genre entry. In any case, The Tall Man is no Martyrs, and this time the suffering will be all yours.
TREVOR TUMINSKI BUMPS ’N’ GRIND
THE VICTIM Starring Michael Biehn, Jennifer Blanc and Ryan Honey
Written and directed by Michael Biehn Anchor Bay
Hollywood veteran Michael Biehn is branching out. Allegedly acting on advice from his Planet
of cops (Ryan Honey and Denny Kirkwood per- forming a bad-cop/slightly-less-bad-cop routine) party in the woods with two coked-up strippers (Harris and Blanc). The real fun begins when one of the girls, now in flight from the cops, finds a cabin in the woods (of course), home to a ruggedly handsome hermit (Biehn). What follows is a tag-team of un- refereed vicious- ness. Add a plotline suggesting a serial killer is on the prowl to this gallery of disreputable types and you’ll wonder who is the killer and who’s the titular “victim” here. More can’t be
said without spoil- ing The Victim’s in- tensity… or its humour. Balancing comedy, sex and brutal DIY violence (oh, the things one can do with a red-hot crowbar, a big rock or bare hands), it actually hits closer to the grindhouse aesthetic than the Tarantino-Rodriguez opus that made that term mainstream, but like its prede- cessor it’s also a loving parody. All the macho, whose-is-bigger bullshit is, as it should be, com- ically overplayed. But while Biehn lets us know not to take his film too seriously, it’s a notewor- thy example of how far you can take things on a meagre budget, especially in the Season of the Comic Book Blockbuster. Shot in only twelve days, The Victim is a sleazy
little labour of love that won’t have anyone mis- taking Biehn for Bergman, but the tough-guy character actor proves he’s got a place behind the camera too. He’s also been tirelessly touring colleges and conventions with the film so maybe something of the “notorious taskmasters” that he’s worked for (directors James Cameron and Michael Bay among them) has rubbed off. SCOTT CROMPTON