Tar, 2020.
Directed by Aaron Wolf.
Starring Timothy Bottoms, Graham Greene, Aaron Wolf, Emily Peachey, Max Perlich, Nicole Alexandra Shipley, Tiffany Shepis, Stuart Stone, and Sandy Danto.
SYNOPSIS:
For Barry Greenwood and his son Zach, there’s not much left of their family business either. With the city’s subway expanding under their feet and their office building slated for demolition, Barry, Zach and their employees are forced to shut down their shop and move out. But when something primal is awoken by the underground construction, a night of somber packing becomes a desperate fight for survival.
At one point, Tar appears to be self-aware that it’s a terrible creature feature. It comes in the form of the dimwitted heavyset Ben (Sandy Danto) joking around about how he deserves a kiss from his attractive coworker if he steps in and does something heroic when she is endangered. It’s an amusing bit that shows, if nothing else, co-writer/director Aaron Wolf (he also stars in the leading role) is willing to poke fun at not simply horror tropes, but his own bad movie that embraces every cliché in the book. Or so I thought, as later on in the film Ben does indeed do something saintly, only for him to start demanding he gets his kiss right away like the straight-up incel his character is, only it’s not played for laughs considering he is throwing a temper tantrum about this after multiple people have been maimed and dismembered by the titular tar monster.
By this point, Tar had actually become a slog to watch, but it was the final straw that set in the realization that this movie is just terrible. Basically, it’s about a family and their business that resides over the Los Angeles La Brea Tar Pits, and the building is about to be torn down and replaced with a KFC of all things (I’m not sure if that’s more of the film’s idea of humor or just a serious statement). There is also some family drama between the Greenwoods (too much and also one too many musical montages for a horror movie), complete with some poorly edited in flashbacks that relate to the monster. None of it is particularly interesting, and the first 45 minutes is spent watching these bland characters attempt to be funny around each other and pack everything up. Zach (Aaron Wolf) doesn’t get interrupted trying to have sex with his girlfriend once, but twice! That’s the material we are working with here to drag Tar out to 90 minutes.
The first time Zach is interrupted, the lights to the entire building go out. Apparently, all of the construction being done underground (there are so many exterior sewer shots, it’s like no one even tried to hide ripping off It for some of the cinematography and I half expected the tar monster to start luring children down there) has made the creature restless. There is also a homeless man that has been telling stories about the monster for as long as Zach was a child, which also comes to play in the story.
The first half as uneventful as it is could be forgiven if the film was actually scary, but it’s nothing more than loud noises in the dark eventually leading to a lot of gore, but with the violence so shrouded in darkness it’s indecipherable most of the time. I’d love to give you some quick feedback on the monster design, but it’s also hard to comment on what I can’t see in pitch-black darkness. Nevertheless, it appears to be a basic 8-foot humanoid tar-colored monstrosity that goes around clawing people. What I can definitively tell you is that the method for defeating this thing is fairly uncreative and downright silly.
Spliced into Tar are numerous sequences of Zach covered in blood and looking into the camera telling this as a story. It doesn’t take much brainpower to figure out who he is talking to. But there is a one-liner towards the end of that’s so bad even other characters in the movie start to make fun of it. Something tells me anyone that watches Tar will be making fun of that line and the entire movie. It’s horrible, but also not the good kind of horrible. With any luck, drive-in theaters will be sucked into a tar pit before they can actually play the movie.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ / Movie: ★
Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews, friend me on Facebook, follow my Twitter or Letterboxd, check out my personal non-Flickering Myth affiliated Patreon, or email me at MetalGearSolid719@gmail.com
