Mini-ish Monday: A Girl Like Her

You know, the good thing about a mockumentary is that you can have all of the hard hitting emotion and exploitative trickery of a normal documentary without any of the actual real life nonsense getting in your way. Amy S. Weber's A Girl Like Her really ramps up the real factor and, by the end, completely alienates you with the absolutely fantastical, pie-in-the-sky butt-fuckery that is it's concluding moments. It sounds like I hate this film at the moment but really I'm so in two minds about this movie, because it is pretty great. It's well made and emotional and really nails the peaks and troughs of high school life; but at the same time it's fucking dumb, nauseatingly idealistic and inadvertently satirical to great unintentional comedic effect. OK, this is going to be hard to do in three paragraphs, so we'll go good then bad. Ahem.

"This tiny thing...is my opinion. And I'm going to shove it down your throat."

One sentence blurb: A Girl Like Her is a mockumentary charting a top-ranking American high school as it deals with the attempted suicide of one of it's students (Jessica, played by Lexi Ainsworth), exploring the very real US bullying epidemic and such like. We start the film with Jessica popping hella pills and going into a coma, as you do with all that hydrocodone you just so happen to have lying around your house. It very quickly transpires that she has been suffering some pretty intense bullying from the popular girl, Avery (Hunter King) and has been encouraged to start recording the abuse by her friend, Brian (Jimmy Bennett). The acting from King and Bennett, as well as the majority of the supporting cast, is spot on and hard hitting; King is a suitably vile beast from the stygian abyss, revelling in the torture of Jessica, who sadly doesn't get a great deal of screen time due to the aforementioned coma. The documentarian style of candid cameras and talking heads works very well in the context of the narrative and keeps things grounded nicely as events unfold and we dip into the beating heart of the school. Plot itself very quickly takes a back seat in favour of developing our antagonist and pushing the very forward, but very necessary, anti-bullying message of the film, which on a whole is well intentioned and correct. OK, um, here's the bad bits.

The person we're meant to give a shit about, doing what she does for the entire run time of the film.

I have the weirdest feeling that Amy S. Weber is trying to make up for something with this movie. Very quickly do we curtail any pretence of this being about Jessica and focus solely on her harasser, Avery; an act which worryingly parallels the way in which modern media obsesses over the accused in cases of sexual assault and the like, leaving the survivor as a footnote. I know this breaks my three paragraph rule but I think it's important that you see who we're dealing with here. I apologise in advance to anyone whom this might awaken awful high school memories for; King is too perfect as the archetypal evil popular girl.

That is a face only an icepick could love.

I don't care if this is a movie about redemption and accepting that "hurt people hurt people" and all that lovey dovey nonsense. It works in theory, yes, but in theory alone; and that's exactly where this movie resides, in that magical fantasy world where the school bully would eventually see the error of their ways and apologise rather than dig their heels in like a cantankerous mare and double down on the bitch-factor. I've witnessed events very similar to these myself and in my experience no-one ever admits to being the one to blame, usually the exact opposite to tell the truth; everyone else in the school will feel guilt before the actual perpetrator will. No, it shouldn't be like that, and yes, it should be more like what happens in this film, but it feels unfair to those who suffer to assume that an apology and some tears is ever going to be enough to make up for what the victim has been put through. It is a noble message, but a heavily misguided one. Misguided would be a way to describe some of the choices of filming at a few points in the story as well; documentaries are voyeuristic and exploitative in their very nature at the best of times, but when you're secretly filming crying students and shoving a lens in the face of a grieving father you might be taking the biscuit a little.

Crew needed for new documentary. Stone heart absolutely necessary.

You don't line up a shot like that without thinking about a little thing called subtext, so this is what I think this movie is really about, and one more little aspect of A Girl Like Her lends it some credibility: the maker of the film's fake documentary and the woman who conducts the interviews throughout is actually Amy S. Weber herself. I think this film might be Weber acknowledging her past as either a bully or an accessory to someone who did these kinds of things when she was at high school. I think she understands and accepts the shallowness of these kinds of documentaries and, in likeness, of trying to apologise to a person whose life you have so thoroughly ruined. I think she never did apologise and this is her way of saying that, in a better world, this is what should have happened, but even then how much weight does that even carry? In the end, whatever you do is forced and manipulated either out of self preservation or guilt, and attempting to humanise and justify the actions of the person who did these things merely serves to trivialise the suffering of those she has affected. How do you come to terms with the fact that you did something that is irredeemably bad? I don't know, and neither does this film; but I think it sincerely wishes it did.

Either way, the sequel is gonna make for one hell of a revenge slasher.

Mini Monday: Parasyte -The Maxim-

Japanese anime/manga likes to ask big questions. Death Note ponders how good intentions can, with the introduction of almost limitless power, be warped into monstrous acts. Barakamon explores art and how our creativity is intrinsically linked with the people around us. Dragon Ball Z attempts to create a cohesive story around hair gel and the age-old playground battle of wits that is "I'm better times a million...PLUS ONE". The anime that I just finished watching a matter of days ago, Parasyte -the maxim-, tackles equally as lofty subject matter, inquisitively poking the concepts of humanity and mankind's destructive relationship with nature; something which, for the most part, it does very well.

Helped along with a healthy dose of unpleasant body horror.

This show is super heavy on the plot, so I'll give you the beginner's version: weird parasites of unknown origin (maybe space, they never say) appear on Earth and infect humans by crawling into their brains and taking over their heads (see above); these monsters then survive by feeding on other human beings to keep their host body alive. Our hero, Shinichi Izumi, is infected by one of these parasites but manages to stop it from reaching his brain, instead it burrows into his right arm and takes that over instead. So Shinichi now has a sentient, shape-shifting right arm called Migi (Japanese for "right") and the pair work together to survive as they come to blows with other parasites and try to keep their existence secret; obviously this doesn't go particularly well.

Seen above: Not being very inconspicuous.

The animation is fabulously grotesque, particularly when it comes to the strikingly regular eviscerations/decapitations, and it helps make the action, although blindingly fast, feel heavy and consequential; you're never sure how things might end up playing out. And boy does the show play off that as best it can! If you thought Game of Thrones was trigger happy with doing unspeakable things to its characters, you're in for one hell of a treat; no-one gets out of Parasyte unscathed. There's multiple massacres, usually in schools, and the majority of the principal cast ends up killed, infected or both, usually in a most unexpected and brutal fashion; although there's a few spots of nice humour thrown in there to keep you calm. It's a heart pounding experience that, with a meaty yet brief 24 episode run, maintains a firm narrative rhythm and knows exactly for how long it should stick around.

Migi is adorable. A cold, ruthless killer, but still adorable.

There are always downsides, however, and Parasyte has a few. The plot runs thick and fast throughout the show, but often each character's internal monologue and contemplations with one another become repetitive and extremely protracted; there's only so many times someone can say "You're not like you used to be" before it loses any meaning. This gets particularly bad in the closing episodes, where you're regularly treated to over-bearing 5-minute long speeches about how mankind is the real evil due to its destruction of the natural world, or how Shinichi has realised the true meaning of being human yada yada bleh bleh. Luckily the writing and translation is good and the points relevant enough to the show's overarching themes to still be engaging, but you can't shake that icky forced environmentalism schtick. Also, it felt like the final epic confrontation was sort of shoehorned in at the end, sticking out like a compound fracture compared to the rest of the show; it may have worked better to introduce the unkillable nemesis earlier in order to establish him as a constant threat, ie Alien or Resident Evil: Nemesis. On a whole, though, if you're looking for some great body horror with satisfying action, fascinating characters and a healthy dose of cod-liver-musings, then, yeah, this one'll do you. Also, you have super specific tastes.

Mini Monday! - Stonehearst Asylum

Don't let the shoestring budget-porn poster fool you.

I don't post often enough. I know, it's a real tragedy for us all; and the reason for this is often due to the long, tangential prose that I'm prone to writing. To correct both this and the issue of a rather sparse posting schedule I've decided to start reviewing select films in a rather truncated 3-paragraphs-or-less. Concise, snappy, and never listing more than two synonymous adjectives at any one time. Without further ado, here's the first of hopefully many to come.

Obligatory gothic-horror "character holding an oil lamp in a dank cellar" moment? Check.

To successfully portray old-fashioned medicine through the lens of a modern conscience is akin to trying to understand why 14-year old white girls on Tumblr are so angry all the time without being one of said 14-year old white girls; that is to say nigh impossible. That said, I was pleasantly surprised by Stonehearst Asylum's noble effort to do just so. With an insidiously star-studded cast, a rather sprightly 6.8 on IMDb, and drawing influence from the Gothic King himself, Mr. Edgar Allan Poe, it is a thoroughly pleasant film to watch on a Thursday night after a bag of M&Ms and three gin and tonics. If the bracingly despicable Shitty Island were German supermarket own-brand 2-ply, then Stonehearst Asylum would be the infinitely more comfortable cheap branded 3-ply that's on buy one get 1/3 off fabric softener.

I pretty much exclusively know this actor as that guy who always tilts his head when he acts.

Acting-wise, there's A-listers bleeding out of the dank walls, all performing with the lackadaisical attitude of someone who was handed the script and a delicious sandwich and told to choose only one. But campy gothic period thriller is as campy gotherioller (ew, that didn't work) does, and the stunted performances bow out to make room for fog and plot, in that order. Young academic, weird asylum, creepy lead doctor, underlying mystery. It's all very expected but presented like a reasonably up-market free buffet; you're not going to complain. There's a few twists and plenty of atmosphere and I'm sure you'll enjoy yourself. Just try not to think too hard about the uncomfortable sub-plot of Jim Sturgess' doctor getting very fond of Kate Beckinsale alarmingly quickly.

When a lady convulses when you touch her, it probably means no. Unless under very particular circumstances.

The interesting bit for me, though, is the medicine. Stonehearst portrays a world flipped on it's head, where the patients have taken over the asylum (no relation to the great Ken Stott/David Tennant mini-series) and put in place a system of their own. Out goes the tortuous force-feeding and humiliating examinations and in comes space for patients to express themselves, to develop occupational skills, and to begin adjusting to normal life. It purposefully parallels with many of the tenants of modern psychiatric medicine, criticising the archaic methods of old and championing these new, then avant garde ideals. What's good is the way that they manage to present these changes from the point of view of the time; as terrifying, chaotic concepts literally dreamt up by a madman, but undeniably effective. It is here, however, that the film precariously straddles the borders of profoundness with it's well-intentioned ignorance. Despite suggesting that these methods are more beneficial to the patients the film also paints it as an unsustainable model, with the asylum gradually falling apart under it's new chaotic rule, as well as once again falling into the age-old trap (bad One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, bad!) of believing that electro-convulsive therapy (ECT) is some barbaric mind-wiping zap-magic. In the end, the message reflects the general "-ness" of the film: good, but not great.

As good as any film that gives Michael Caine the same number of lines as a character who
believes he is a horse could hope to be.

Overall Ben Equivalence Rating

A Starbucks Hot Chocolate - Well presented and reasonably enjoyable but inherently flawed, leaving you with a metallic taste in your mouth and the wonder as to whether you really actually liked it.