Neat trick.
Who am I to say that a film misses the target, when I have no idea what it is going for?
We learn in the opening minutes that Suki suffers from multiple personality disorder, with one of the personalities possibly being a killer. We see in these scenes that Suki loves a tatt, a piercing and a sullen look. She also loves wearing outfits that strategically just miss vital areas. We realise that she is an especially marketable hybrid of goth, emo, alterna types.
Suki self administers shock treatment with the unlikely aim of eliminating unwanted personalities one by one, while Hogan – an opportunistic guy who bangs the vulnerable suicidal chicks – watches on, and a cavalcade of nut jobs wander the halls outside.
Suki tells of her stay in a suicide hotel. A fleuro-manga nightmare where the patients all suffer from a wide range of maladies and still the high rise windows and rooftops remain open, leaving only the hard yet somehow inviting concrete floors below.
These are things we know, but there is much more we don’t know, even though I think the film tries to explain it to us.
Amid the stylised drabness there are bits that are almost sitcom slapstick in nature. There is a Godzilla style face off that would be better placed in another film, and throughout leering camera movements and costume decisions that seek to exploit the curvature of the female protagonists.
This is a weird film about things that I obviously don’t understand. Such a pretty, confusing mess. Maybe I might be missing a chromosome or have a few too many years under belt to ‘get’ all this. Or maybe there just isn’t much to get.
Final Rating – 6 / 10. It’s entirely possible that The Scribbler would be easier to understand if it took a deep breath and tried to straighten up.
