She’s superfreakayyyyy… yow.
Excision might not be the weirdest film that I have watched this year, but I’d venture that it was the weirdest viewing experience I’ve had watching a film this year.
In the course of finding stuff worthy of writing about good and bad I watch over 200 films annually. As you might expect many of those are less than stellar efforts, with many skirting the periphery of good taste. And some vomiting on it.
But even when those films are on I rarely worry too much if my wife wanders past and rolls her eyes at my latest finding. After so many years she’s become numb to my leftfield preferences, for the most part. Last night though, I kept glancing around as if a teenager watching his first R rated film while he thought his parents slept.
This is a dark and subversive film indeed, and I think the main reason for that is because for all of its lunacy, here is a horrible scenario that seems scarily plausible.
On the surface Pauline (Annlynne McCord) is just another apathetic teenager. Her posture is awful, her hygiene suspect and her attitude ranges from resentful to combative, especially with school teachers and her ‘well meaning but highly strung’ mother.
But there is an awful lot going on beneath the pale surface and the dark sullen, often vacant – or hate filled – eyes.
With her interest in typical teenage stuff non-existent, Pauline finds solace in her dreams, which seem to arrive while sleeping and in the waking hours. Though these are not your Grandma’s dreams. These aren’t even the ‘goth kid who sleeps with death metal CD covers’ dreams. Vivid and unsettling, with bare skin and graphic bloodletting, it’s hard to tell whether these snuff-snippets lend Pauline solace, inspiration, or both.
When she does talk, Pauline is direct and ignorant of societal niceties. She only communicates if it assists in moving towards and ticking off her goals, and even then in only the most blunt manner.
In between visions and sleep, Pauline cares for two things; her ultimate goal of being a physician, and her younger sister with a debilitating and potentially fatal lung condition – and for the most part she has trouble even relaying this care.
As time goes on Pauline makes more and more enemies with her ascerbic tongue and single minded drive. The neighbours. The teachers. The other students. Even her dad seems to switch off at times. Only her mum shows a genuine effort to help Pauline back to the ‘real world’, but the years of nagging and berating have taken their toll, and Pauline withdraws only further into her shell.
I have no doubt that Excision is a horror film, though it has no ‘Boo’ moments, ghosts, monsters or similar. As a result it is one of those all too possible horror films that you can’t simply shrug off. This is less a ‘moments’ film than it is an inexorable descent toward a bottom that you can’t begin to predict. It is an uncomfortable ride to a destination that you don’t want to reach – but you nonetheless can’t stop watching.
I know nothing of Annalynne McCord before or after this film, but man does she embody Pauline, creating a character that is one of the most polarising and disturbing that I can remember. Former porn star Traci Lords also does a creditable job as the unfortunate mother tasked with saving Pauline from herself. So good is her performance that I mistakenly pegged her as Rebecca DeMornay until the credits rolled. (Not sure if that says more about Lords or DeMornay, regardless Lords is good here.)
Ultimately this proves a Protest Review because I refuse to recommend or condemn Excision. I can only acknowledge its power and credit the competency with which it was created. Films such as Excision should only be watched by those with strong dispositions and stomachs, and those not easily influenced or appalled. It is strange enough to be fanciful, yet realistic enough to be disgusting in ways that Freddy Kreuger and countless monsters can never be.
Final Rating – Rating Refused. McCord puts in a performance for the ages in a powerful film (that I hope is not widely seen).
