Spike (2008)
Director: Robert Beaucage
Writer: Robert Beaucage
Starring: Sarah Livingston Evans, Jared Edwards, Anna-Marie Wayne, Nancy P. Corbo, Edward Gusts
Language: English
Runtime: 85 minutes approx.
Age Rating: 15
Genre: Thriller, Horror
Reviewed by Ross Miller
If anyone ever asks me what the definition of a festival film is, I am now equipped to give them a general answer in the form of Spike; a peculiar and decisively amateurish film, one that I think will only appeal to a very select audience.
I don’t think I can give a better outline of the film than the people behind 2008’s Edinburgh International Film Festival have, so I am not even going to try to. Instead I will quote what they have said – Crouch down for spikes, dykes, beasties and obsequies! A backwoods car cruise turns ominous when a lesbian couple, a macho himbo, and ‘The Girl’ are roadraged by the titular monster – all in the name of love, of course. Reclaiming the fairytale for adults, Spike reveals the obsessive beast skulking within the bloom of childhood romance. Goth(ic) horror at its most prickly.
Spike is the kind of film I absolutely thought I’d like. That I really should have liked. I’m the type of film goer that admires the offbeat, applauds the peculiar and welcomes anything that’s different than what we normally see. However there was just something ugly and stiff about this film; it dragged and it was frankly boring a lot of the time. I found that I had to force myself to concentrate because the nonsensical and thus hard to understand plot lost me more times than I can count. I felt that there was a lot of potential in there but they just didn’t seem to go at it as much as they could have.
What appealed to me about the film before I saw it was, apart from that kick-ass synopsis, I got a David Lynch vibe from it. Not that anyone told me this. Not that it was stated to be that way, but just something I got from the images I saw beforehand and the synopsis that felt very ‘Lynchian’ to me. And being the Lynch obsessed fan that I am, this was obviously very appealing to me. A lot of the time it did feel like it was trying to be like his films. But rather than a successful homage, and again this may be unfair because it may never have been the intention in the first place, it comes off as a bad impersonation. The whole thing felt like a gruesome fairytale told badly.
The cast is made up of mostly unknowns which helps us to disappear into the world that the film creates. They’re not particularly interesting actors or characters but I at least admire the choice, out of necessity or otherwise, to choose a cast which is not well known. In a lot of movies nowadays which have extremely well known actors I am always very aware it is them I am watching on-screen, but having relatively unknowns is great to see every once in a while.
Within the first five minutes or so it seems to be a random collection of scenes which just happen to have the same people in them. In my opinion if it had kept that mentality I would have liked it a lot more, as I am a huge fan of weird and surreal cinema. However when it introduces and proceeds with its plot it’s at first intriguing but soon becomes repetitive and boresome. However in saying that there’s some nice plot points here and there, and it’s a great little film to look at, so it’s not all bad. There will be a select audience out there which will lap this film up and ask for seconds, and I can at least see how people would like it even if I personally don’t.
It’s hard to even classify my opinion of the film, or more specifically why I didn’t really like it. I guess it comes down to how it just doesn’t work – it seems very amateurish, none of the scenes really fit together right and in it’s attempts to be a “cult” film (which I got a strong vibe that’s what it wanted to be) it doesn’t really succeed. There are some nice visuals in there and some admirable creativity is at play but I can’t say I’d recommend Spike to anyone.
