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Weirdsville
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| Year: |
2007
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Director: |
Allan Moyle
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| Stars: |
Scott Speedman, Wes Bentley, Taryn Manning, Matt Frewer, Greg Bryk, Maggie Castle, Raoul Bhaneja, Joe Dinicol, Mark Parr, Dax Ravina, Jordan Prentice, James McQuade, Shayne Wyler, Joey Beck, Allan Redford, Randy Butcher, Derek Gilroy
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| Genre: |
Comedy, Thriller |
| Rating: |
  6 (from 1 vote) |
| Review: |
Two stoner friends, Royce, the loud one (Wes Bentley), and Dexter, the quiet and introspective one (Scott Speedman) are currently breaking into a country mansion by smashing a window with a garden gnome. But what has brought them to this state of affairs? Let us go back in time one week, to their meeting with Omar (Raoul Bhaneja) the drug lord whom they owe a large amount of money to. He tells them that if they don't get his money, there will be trouble - painful trouble - so when one of the guys' girlfriends, Matilda (Taryn Manning) hits upon a great idea (so she thinks) of where they can get their hands on some cash they consider it. Unfortunately, Matilda proceeds to take a large part of the drugs Omar has given them to sell and dies of an overdose...
You can't announce that you are weird, as Weirdsville does in the title, it's not a status you can convey on yourself. It's like telling people you are cool, or the Messiah, it's something that has to be agreed upon by others (although there always seems to be someone who will agree with you if you say you're the Messiah, don't ask me why) and not proudly proclaimed by your good self. In fact, chances are that if someone tells you they are weird, they're trying to persuade themselves that they're just that touch more interesting than the man in the street, and that's the feeling that this film puts across, not quite "Hey guys! Look how wacky I am!", but in that area.
In practice, Weirdsville, from a script by Willem Wennekers, plays like a cross between Quentin Tarantino on an off day and Dude, Where's My Car? only without the laughs. Not that there aren't funny moments, it's just that they're too few and far between for a purported comedy. Speedman and Bentley are certainly two of the healthiest-looking junkies to grace the silver screen, but Speedman has the excuse that his character has gone cold turkey before the story commences so will probably be feeling a bit better, or at least he does until he walks in on Matilda lying dead in Royce's apartment. Royce's solution is to avoid police involvement and go straight to the funeral: that is, bury her body at an off season drive-in.
Once the bumbling duo arrive at the drive-in they end up in the basement of the office there, but what do you know? They have company in the shape of four Satanists, or three when one is sacrificed, as witnessed by Dexter. He rushes to get Royce and the body, but they're spotted and stopped from getting away by the leader, an old school friend called Abel (Greg Bryk) as it turns out. So the plot escalates into a runaround with Matilda unexpectedly resurrected, then targeted as the next sacrifice, as all the while our heores have to break into the country house to get the safe to which Matilda has the combination. Despite coming on like a poor man's After Hours, eventually something surprising happens: Weirdsville grows on you. There are some smart performances, a sprinkling of good lines, and a dwarf security guard (Jordan Prentice) with a hatred of the Moonies ("Inchon sucked!") who nearly runs away with the movie. In trying to be bizarre it might look contrived, but by the end you won't feel as if you've wasted your time. Music by John Rowley.
[Contender's Region 2 DVD has a wealth of featurettes and interviews should you care to delve deeper into its world.]
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| Reviewer: |
Graeme Clark
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