OCTOBER HORROR 2017 - Tusk

“Are you really mourning your loss of humanity? I don’t understand. Who in the hell would want to be human? God Almighty… In all of my travels, I’ve only ever known a human to be an ocean of shit.”

One of the things I like about the newest decade of horror (the 2010’s) is that there’s a great deal of experimentation with the genre. After having to deal with the body horrors, the torture porn, and the countless remakes of the 2000’s, it seemed that horror was filled with more gore than actual creativity. Then came along the 2010’s, with far more experimental works that played with different stories, alternative methods in telling those stories, and even different mixtures of the genre with others. Sure there were still plenty of remakes (which in all honesty had gotten better), there was the huge popularity of the found footage genre, the self-aware critiques of the genre (like “Cabin in the Woods” and “Tucker and Dale vs Evil”), and films that some deeper meaning while also being genuinly scary (like “The Babadook”). Which is why I was pretty interested in seeing the film “Tusk” by Kevin Smith. I don’t have much of a history with Kevin Smith as a director, though I’ve seen several movies that have starred him in either a main or side role. The film looked interesting enough to me, and from merely an introduction on Cinemassacre, I thought it would be interesting to look it over.

“Tusk” is about a pod-cast host named Wallace, who does a show making fun of people and showing them to the masses. He hits a jackpot when a video of a kid playing with a sword and chopping his own leg becomes a viral hit, and so it prompts him to take a flight to Canada to interview the kid and exploit his humiliation. Unfortunately, upon landing, he finds that the kid committed suicide, and that now Wallace is stuck without a story. Luck finds him when he comes across an advert for some housing and a story from an old man. He quickly heads over and listens to the old man, named Howard, who was an adventurer and was once ship-wrecked and saved by a Walrus. However Wallace is drugged, and now finds himself under the knife of Howard, who tells him that he plans to transform Wallace into a walrus through horrific surgery. Now Wallace is trapped, and now his rescue lies in his friends to find him before he fully becomes a walrus.

This is a very weird film with some decent acting. Justin Long as Wallace is an excellent jerk character who you want to hate in the beginning, but then feel sorry for as his transformation goes on. Howard is a crazy old man who has some sympathetic story reasons for why he wants to turn people into walruses, and can be both creepy and a bit hilarious in how insane he is throughout the film. Aside from them there are about a dozen smaller characters, such as Wallace’s pod-cast partner and his girlfriend, along with several Canadian characters and even Johnny Depp as an eccentric detective out to find Howard. While Depp’s character is a bit fun, everyone else is either a bit forgettable, good for one scene, or okay enough that you are fine with them but aren’t that interesting.

There are a lot of long conversation scenes, and even a lot of quiet moments that hardly ever make use of jumpscares, which is pretty nice. These long conversations make for some good character development and intrigue, as you wait for what will happen with the walrus transformation, however it can at times feel like it drags for too long. The film overall has that indie feel, with shots and switching moods that create a sort of style for the film, which I quite like. What I like even more is the use of practical effects, especially the Walrus suit; the final transformation of Wallace is this ghastly, stitched up mess of skin and organs that make up this bulky mass that just barely matches a walrus. The terrible quality of the suit is not only horrific and a bit funny, but it also adds on to the insanity of Howard and how utterly depressing things are for Wallace. Another horrific bit about this film is a scene involving Wallace, in full Walrus suit, finding the remains of Howard’s past victims, which I felt was the scariest part about the whole film and is sure to get at other viewers as well. The film is very weird, but also laid back at times, and I think that adds on to the horror of the moments where it’s actually supposed to be horror.

The film would receive mixed reviews, with positive critiques covering its charm and its strangely funny premise, while its detractors felt that the movie was disgusting and that its story was stretched thin (and with a run time of over an hour and 40 minutes, I have to agree). Unfortunately the film would become a box office bomb, with box office of $1.8m against a budget of $3m. It’s sad that this film failed so harshly in the box office, as I felt that it was a decent enough flick worthy of at least moderate success. There’s nothing truly terrible, and I’d say that the biggest issues are simply its long running-time and a bit of its humor.

“Tusk” is a charming, weird, and sometimes scary film. It delivers on its crazy premise, and does so with a neat film that has some entertainment value. I recommend a casual watch whenever you get the chance.