“Yes she was in a great deal of pain but then we cut off her head and put a stake through her heart and she found peace” – Dr. Van Helsing, ‘Francis Ford Coppola Presents Bram Stoker’s Dracula‘
Oh boy, we’re building to something in Behind With Knife! Wonder if whatever happens at the end of this week, the penultimate week, will have consequences for what happens in next week’s round of chapters. It’s all building to Halloween Friday, so catch up now! This week, we’ve had chapter 16, chapter 17, and chapter 18 so far. Here’s chapter 1, if you haven’t started but want to.
And now, who’s ready to get scared laugh?
Hey, not to bring up real life, but do you laugh anymore? Hopefully that’s a stupid question. I laugh all the time, and not just because of weed. Increasingly, though, entertainment doesn’t really make me laugh. It’s popular to talk about how Hollywood doesn’t make comedies any more. Partially because they barely do, but also because the incoherent loser refrain of “you cant say anything any more” and “you couldn’t make Blazing Saddles today” will never die. There are exceptions—Danny McBride and Tim Robinson’s work is excellent, and I do like what Dropout does. Even Dropout, though—I know for a fact that I would be enjoying Dropout a lot more, like, six or seven world-altering tragedies ago. Speaking of things I know I would’ve enjoyed a lot more 10 years ago, let’s get into Werewolves Within and Behind The Mask: The Rise Of Leslie Vernon.
Werewolves Within is a movie I feel like I should like. It’s about werewolves, for one. It’s got two great leads: Detroiters and I Think You Should Leave superstar Sam Richardson, and Milana Vayntrub, whom I’ve been cheering for ever since she starred in a Cracked.com video about how men should be nicer to women on the internet (what a time 2013 was). The set up is pretty straightforward: Richardson’s Forest Ranger Finn is the stranger who comes to town, Vayntrub’s Cecily the manic pixie dream girl who befriends him. Might as well be Garden State But Snowy, except, don’t forget: there’s a werewolf out there. Hell breaks loose, there’s a mystery, and then a twist at the end. Howl at the moon.
It took me three tries to watch this movie because I kept falling asleep. That in and of itself is unremarkable—I go to bed around midnight, and whatever Mallory and I have been watching is over around 11, with her asleep on the couch next to me. Plenty of movies take a few days to get through. This one, though? I just kept not being into it. When I finally finished, it hardly felt worth it (even if the last scene is super sick, werewolf-wise).
Why didn’t this movie work for me? Hard to put my finger on. I kept finding myself disgusted with Ranger Finn’s mewling lack of confidence. Quit letting Saddle Creek Records bands tell you how to be a man, dude. No, those self-help tapes won’t do the trick, either. 15 years ago, a Rivers Cuomo descendent as protagonist wouldn’t have bothered me, though, so maybe that’s me growing. Then again, the supporting cast does not lift the movie, and man, I don’t know. Maybe filling out the cast with a bunch of rank-and-file LA improv people isn’t the move. Or maybe it was the script. Maybe the same joke formulations that worked in the 2000s don’t work anymore, at least not on 37-year-old me. Does the dialogue in Werewolves Within rise to the level of soy banter? You know, that smug, MCU-style of “super wild thing happens, then character looks almost direct-to-camera and says ‘sooooo….that just happened'” jokes? The style of talking that Ben Schwartz has made a whole career out of? I don’t know, I’d have to watch the movie again to really find out. It’s at least Millennial cringe humor. And maybe my patience has just run out with that style of humor. Sometimes, it reminds me of J.D. Vance stalking Kamala Harris around and talking about “I’m just making sure my plane is safe.”
Behind The Mask: The Rise Of Leslie Vernon is another movie I think I would’ve loved in 2006. It’s a mockumentary, a la The Office or Spinal Tap. It also has Takes about How Slashers Work, a la Scream or the Indian Lake trilogy. Problem is, it’s a little like someone in their first writing workshop sophomore year of college having all these ideas. Our mockumentary crew is overly credulous host Taylor and two camera-holding dipshits, Todd and Doug. Our killer, Leslie, is a Dane Cook-is-the-biggest-comedian-rn-style bro. Normally, this is a fine setup. Dipshit white men and overly credulous white women are to blame for roughly 95% of the world’s ills. Taylor, Todd, and Doug are mostly starry-eyed as Leslie takes them through his planning. This includes stalking high schoolers for potential victims. On the night of the killings, the crew has an attack on conscience and tries to stop them—despite being full aiding and abetting accessories up until this point.
Maybe if Scream hadn’t come out 10 years earlier, or Scream 2 nine years earlier, or Scream 3 six years earlier, then all that post-Christian Male Feminist philosophizing about how a virginal girl will become her true self when facing a slasher would’ve been more compelling. Maybe if the twist didn’t hinge on whether or not someone can be a virgin while also knowing different sex positions. Maybe if the movie didn’t feel like something Brendan and I would’ve come up with while drunk in Spencer’s basement midway through college. What’d I compare this to up there?The Office, Spinal Tap, Scream, and the Indian Lake trilogy? That’s the ’87 Lakers, ’86 Celtics, ’96 Bulls, and ’15 Spurs. Behind The Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon is like a D-III college team that runs a gimmick offense and scores 115 points a game while playing all sub-5’10” dudes. Cool trick, but show me something compelling.
When I think about horror comedies that do work for me? Well, an obvious type is movies I’ve already seen. Those jokes are chicken noodle soup. I laugh at the jokes in American Werewolf In London or Ash Vs. The Army Of Darkness because I know what’s coming. Really, though, I think humor is most effective when the movie isn’t self-consciously trying to be a comedy. The epigraph for this week isn’t from a comedy, but it is the horror movie line I think about and laugh about the most. There’s something in Anthony Hopkins’ deranged doctor performance, yes, but also the casualness with which he describes desecrating a vampiric corpse. It could be a wink to the audience, since the audience knows how to kill vampires. Hopkins plays it straight (as straight as that sort of kookiness can be), and it becomes hilarious.
Movies like Totally Killer or Cabin In The Woods or Happy Death Day or The Babysitter work because they are deathly serious about being horror movies, but they happen to have people making jokes throughout. Every cast member in Cabin In The Woods is naturally funny. Everyone in Bodies Bodies Bodies is reacting to an increasingly absurd situation in both emotional and sardonic ways, and it balances out. There are times where it feels like The Babysitter 2 is going to fly completely off the rails, but it doesn’t, because Cole and Phoebe feel more human, more invested in surviving their situation than Werewolves Within‘s Finn and Cecily do.
I want to laugh at stuff. I don’t think—or at least don’t want to think—that I’m so jaded that I can’t laugh at a comedy. And I don’t think comedies of the 2020s have to take after Tim Robinson or Danny McBride (in fact, I would really prefer people not bite those dudes’ styles). There does seem to be a problem with standup comedy lately—this Distraction podcast with my old Cracked comrade Eli Yudin does a good job of illuminating how comedy is being killed by the twin monsters of 1) comedians being overworked and 2) the Joe Rogan/KillTony set being the biggest stars. Idk. It really seems like Hollywood doesn’t know how to make a comedy right now. Then again, from about 1987-1995, Hollywood had absolutely no clue how to make a slasher. The Paul Rudd Halloween comes out in 1995. What comes out in 1996?
Bless you, Sydney and Tatum and Billy and Stu and Randy and Gale and Dewey. Casey, too.
Sorry you got an email,
Chris