Review #18: Tusk (2014)


This review was originally written in October 2016.

Day 18: Tusk

My second substitute, I picked this movie because it generated a lot of buzz when it came out for being so bizarre, as well as because it was directed by Kevin Smith. So I guess I had high expectations going in.

What to say about Tusk? Well, it was good- really good- ....at first. The first half of the movie was genuinely interesting and it did a great job of building up to the horror you knew was coming. When the villain began his diabolical plan, I was horrified for the main character and what was coming. But like the Titanic (the boat, not the movie) this ocean liner of film was headed for an iceberg.

That is, the last third of the movie. Once Justin Long's character undergoes his transformation, I just couldn't take the movie seriously anymore. The costume he was in looked absolutely ridiculous- with no exaggeration, it looked like he was wearing a rubber suit bought from Hot Topic or something. This film, at the very least the first few scenes after this point, could have benefited hugely from even a little bit of discretion. It seemed at first they weren't really going to give us a good look at it during its first scene, but then right when you start to think, "Wow, this thing is going to be terrifying" they give you nothing but full-body shots of the costume for the entire rest of the movie. Without even taking into consideration the medical ramifications of turning a human being into a stitched-together Frankenstein's Walrus in a single day, every time they gave us a good long look at that thing it made me fully aware of the fact that I was watching a movie where an actor is in a suit and parading in front of a camera.

And it's really a shame, because up until that point I was super-invested in the character's plight and I was terrified for him, wondering how he was going to get out of this. After that point... why bother worrying? He's just an actor in a suit. I suppose the argument could be made that the movie wasn't meant to be taken seriously before that point, but the first half or so had so much attention to tension and atmosphere, I can't see the latter part as anything but a change of genre at best and a jump-the-shark (jump-the-walrus?) moment at worst. And it's not even just the suit that bothered me, either- the ex-cop character who is introduced shortly thereafter was so equally cartoonish I couldn't tell what kind of a movie I was watching, despite having finished more than half of it. Again, maybe that was their intent all along, but I don't think many moviegoers want to be lured in with one movie for an hour and then given a bait-and-switch for the last half-hour.

Rating: 6/10 Hints at sideplots that ultimately went nowhere

Seconds it took for me to realize that's what Haley Joel Osment looks like now: ~10

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