As much as mankind can be
populated by completely reprehensible beings, can anything succeed if the
ending just confirms this in a nihilistic conclusion and nothing more? Maybe,
and virtues can be found in the film I'm covering here, but ultimately the concept won't succeed
if said film is not as well made as it should and comes off as just a nasty,
cynical take on
The Texas Chainsaw
Massacre (1974). This is a film that will put in one a sense of anger
against it with its foreign tourists, going on a whale watch trip, and the Icelandic
family about to pick them off being all reprehensible or gullibly naive. Sexism,
attempted rape, bigotry, homophobia, racism, a callous disinterest in one's
other man, the film is intentionally trying to get a reaction with its
dog-eat-dog depiction of survival where the last one standing is the only "good"
person. It's a viewpoint that is black hearted even in horror. You finally
realise that this is the point of the film after a while - for the occasionally
good person, everyone else is a deplorable human being or a coward, that no
one, not even the hippy-dippy save-the-whales liberals, escapes from the
director's blunderbuss tone of satire. The film actually succeeds with one character,
an assistant for a Japanese couple (
Nae
Yuuki) who adopts to the growing body count quite quickly, the truly sick
satire actually legitimate with her character in how no one wins except the bad
person. It's a difficult film because of this, leaving a bad taste in the
mouth, but it's very significant for a horror film to be going for such a
trangressive mindset rather than merely be content with mediocrity. Even
torture porn horror doesn't truly go this far with having no one to truly
sympathise with or having the good characters being easy targets to pick off.
For one, if not the only, Icelantic horror film, such a cynical, vindictive
little movie like this is quite a shock to the system with its
anti-humanitarian tone, and I'm amazed no one on the Icelandic film board
didn't look at the script with horror.
But is being so anti-humanitarian
really a virtue? The blackest of satire still needs to connect to you to the
characters vaguely, like with Dr.
Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying (1964). You need to connect
to the characters even if they're reprehensible mass murderers - something
which could be learnt with an anime television series actually, Baccano! (2007), which juggled that
dangerous issue with the characterisation very well. Reykjavik Whale Watching Massacre (2009) is still stuck in its
structure, and unfortunately it belongs to these last few decades' obsession
with pointless vindictiveness. Contempt for the world that, even if this film
tries harder, still belongs to a juvenile point of view, one which
dismisses any hope for life instantly than think about it thoughtfully. Pier Paolo Pasolini this isn't, and even
as a horror film with its own criteria, this childish view of human relations
gets oppressive. It's also another film for this season, unfortunately and more
so this early into it, that invokes rape, and again it's a tastelessly put
together scene that just shows up the failings of tact of the whole film. It's
supposed to be a comedy horror film in fact, but that's almost impossible to
put next to the actual results. Worse, it's a pitch black comedy which shows
gaping contradictions in itself. Where the murderous family are clearly
Christian, religious psychopaths, something which comes off as an incredibly
cheap anti-religious attack next to everything else. That the film has no
problems with racial epilates, sexism and near rape, but even in a charismatic,
legitimately brave and good character, dances around homosexuality like one of
the dippy liberals it mocks and comes off as patronising liberals being vaguely
politically correct. It still cannot get past the generic inbred-family-as-killers
plotline despite its tone. The Bjork
cover - fitting, since its Iceland, and a potentially amusing idea - at the end
credits is childishly unfunny and fucking atrocious.
At least I did not just feel
numbed disinterest for the film like in the first half, but by the end credits
it was still a disappointing failure made worse by the few virtues it briefly
showed. It may seem absurd, but viewing this idea for this year's blogathon
over, I have effectively created an absurd film contest for countries around
the globe, boiled down to a country, one after another, standing in the
spotlight, making an attempt at a horror or month appropriate film, and living or
dying after the fact. Regardless of era, type of film, culture or nationality,
regardless of whether there are other films that are better from each choice,
the films chosen are either good or bad. When
Reykjavik Whale Watching Massacre leaves the stage, the bad taste
just leaves you in a fouler mood because you're not laughing at the worst of
the world or learning from it. It's a miserable, nihilistic work that doesn't
connect with my worldview, and it's still a poorly put together film.
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