Shocker
I’m shocked at this cast! Peter “Battleship” Berg as the fucking lead, what the fuck is this? Nepo baby Mitch “The X-Files” Pileggi as the mad killer? Fucking Dr. Timothy Leary as a televangelist that gets punched in the face?
Peter Berg as the lead jolted me to the core. What the hell, how come this is the first time I’m seeing him act outside cameos? He seems about as talented as director.
Having a dud as lead is par for the course, this is a relentless journey into madness. It’s one scene after another of increasing craziness. The killer starts off mad, and never backs down. Agent Smith with ADHD.
The secondary cast is more rounded. Most are almost cameos, only the dad has more than a couple of scenes, other characters remain in the stereotype level, they don’t have time to grow before being brutally murdered. The body count is truly extreme, it transcends slasher amounts.
The first part seems like a regular slasher, all matter of fact and non-supernatural. But then the protagonist gets a CTE, and shit gets insane.
Towards the end it gets more and more esoteric, more effects driven, it lacks internal consistency. There are set pieces, quite disjointed. It trots out the Nightmare on Elm Street dream sequences, but there’s also bizarre features of his room, an extremely floppy water bed.
This is my place for ramblings about sequences of images that exploit the human visual limitation know as persistence of vision.