Inhumanity, 2018.
Directed by Joe McReynolds.
Starring Darcel Danielle, Diana Rose, Ford Austin, and Leviticus Wolfe.
SYNOPSIS:
A deranged serial killer becomes enmeshed in a secret government conspiracy as he is pursued by one of his former victims.
Inhumanity is difficult to even categorize. Probably the least misleading thing to say it is broadly a neo-noir film with affinities to the Coens and Tarantino. Yet, oddly, despite being set in Texas and having a realistic feel it is closer to Tarantino in its emphasis on action, fantastic violence, and hilarious dialogue than the Coens’ Blood Simple with its naturalism.
Darcel Danielle plays Jessa Dixon a woman that serial killer Six Pack Sam (Leviticus Wolfe) kidnaps and almost immediately kills. But before he can choke Jessa to death, Sam is surrounded and kidnapped by mysterious agents of the government. The exact contours of the conspiracy remain murky for a lot of the film but essentially Sam, due to his blood, becomes the chosen guinea pig of Doctor Campbell (Diana Rose) to experiment a new drug.
Jessa recovers but discovers her father, a local Texas police officer, has committed suicide while she was in a coma for three months. Everyone is convinced the suicide was voluntary but Jessa believes he was murdered and teams up with private detective Sergio (Ford Austin), a friend of her father’s who has seemingly endless Deadpool-esque one-liners to spew, to find out what really happened. However, beyond the trauma of being attacked by Sam, her memory is fragmented and confused. Just as Sam almost succeeded in choking her, a hooded government agent actually takes Sam’s place to make it seem as if he (the agent) not Sam was choking her to throw her off the track.
Whatever else might be said about it, Inhumanity does not lack for style or plot. Director Joe McReynolds has certainly hit on some fertile ground. While some of this territory has been hit on before through the Jason Bourne series as well as Face/Off, government conspiracies involving serial killers has actually not been explored all that much. Usually the serial killer genre is confined to its rules and conspiracy thrillers usually feature highly trained operatives or everyday people.
Unfortunately, McReynolds is still too young a director (this is his second feature) and the camera moves too rapidly in certain scenes to let the fear settle in. Before characters can even make an impression they are either dispatched gruesomely or are simply forgotten. Certain parts of the film are edited sloppily and some obvious continuity issues creep in. Many obvious logical problems also are thrown out yet McReynold’s dialogue (he is the writer as well), at least, in many places is so ridiculous it achieves sublime bliss when heard.
Tough the excess of style lessens the dramatic tension of much of the film it also infuses it with a manic energy that simply never stops. Just one major twist seems to stabilize the film yet another twist emerges that moves the plot into even more outrageous territory. After a while, however, the twists have diminishing returns as the plot conveniently keeps adjusting to justify further developments. Another problem is the film might be too alienating for the average viewer.
Usually, especially with such an emphasis on anti-female violence, the female lead will act as the audience’s surrogate. But despite Danielle as Jessa being an earnest performer, the script leaves her stranded. Except for a couple of scenes conveying her courage and fear as she confronts Sam, in the end, the plot about finding justice for her father is too thin to make her an interesting heroine.
Ironically, what will probably be most appealing are the baddies from Sam to Campbell to the sadistic Andre Juarez (Javier Garcia, who also is the director of photography) whose over-the-top performances are excessive but almost never unentertaining. Unfortunately, Sam as played Wolfe had the potential to be a great horror icon a la Jason or Michael. But Wolfe is misdirected in key scenes that rely too much on clichés borrowed from Friday the 13th.
Still Wolfe is fairly impressive (especially considering this is his debut as an actor) and, at times, he succeeds in conveying both the menace and aura of a mythic killer. He is especially good when Sam has to try to feign normality when he escapes his government captors to track down Campbell.
Being produced on the micro-budget, some of the choppiness of the photography and visual effects shows in several key scenes. On the other hand, the lack of realism leads to a lot of hilarity and makes the graphic violence more palatable than it should be. Yet though the film looks adequate it surprisingly contains more than a few scenes with innovative camera movements and composition as well as some truly lyrical images. The sound, especially, is well done.
The dilemma the film can’t escape, however, is beyond the punishing near-two-hour running time, is the plot is not well constructed enough to justify a conspiracy that keeps growing and growing as the body count goes up higher and higher as the film proceeds. It even features an explosion described insanely as “nuclear” that fails to panic much of the local population. Neo-noirs, to be sure, need not obey narrative logic too strongly.
After all, the notorious glowing suitcase in Pulp Fiction is never really explained is it? But without that logic, the many bombastic characters assembled in Inhumanity will be amusing while watching the film but will fail to register much afterwards. Judged, as a second feature, Inhumanity shows great promise and the premise is ripe enough to be explored either again or in more capable hands. Still, Inhumanity while one sees it is a joyful and absurdist trek that is entertaining enough but could have been potentially truly great.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Christian Jimenez
