Dir. Allan Moyle, US, 2007, 90mins
Cast: Scott Speedman, Wes Bentley, Taryn Manning
Review by Matthew Rodgers
Indie favourite Allan Moyle (Pump Up The Volume, Empire Records) returns to the small town underbelly for this tale of optionally disenfranchised youth in a desolate Canadian nowheresville.
Royce (Wes Bentley, American Beauty) and Dexter (Scott Speedman, Underworld) are our perennially stoned protagonists, whose constant state of hallucinogenic haze fuels the ludicrously enjoyable plot mechanisms that result in the mistaken death of their sweet hooker pal Matilda (Taryn Manning, Hustle & Flow), and comically twists in a group of incompetent Goths, a comatose millionaire, and some medieval midgets. With that sort of premise you are going to think you are smoking something too.
Weirdsville is primarily notable for something of a return to acting form for the bag gazing Bentley. His turns in the abominable Ghostrider and historical flop The Four Feathers saw him vanish from the radar, but here he is a shriveling mess of corrupt morals and twitchy ticks that maintains the interest levels when the plot sobers up. Equally good are Scott Speedman as the junkie trying to go straight and the cute as pie Taryn Manning who provides a little heart in the wholly unlikeable ensemble of drop-outs.
As a back-drop for the cold-turkey shenanigans Moyle has enough creative touches to make sure his low-key effort at least has a distinctly unique look to smother the familiarities of the plot (think Trainspotting meets last year's Big Nothing); so we get Speedman’s translucent high as he seemingly skates barefoot through a nighttime vista, as finite amounts of in-focus snow falls from the sky, it’s frankly beautiful and deserves to be in a much better film. Kudos for consistency though because the entire 90mins has a filtered look that benefits the drug fuelled themes.
Weirdsville fails in its ambitious attempts to match such a high concept chain of events that are meant to be grounded in a grimy reality, and may have been forgiven had it not completely bodged the execution of the ending. There is however some fun to be had along the way; the Goths are hilariously useless in their attempted sacrifice “Oh my God” blasphemes one who clearly hasn’t got to grips with the fundamentals of paganism. The bungling duo’s foray into breaking and entering is also a guffaw raising set-piece.
Quirky, kooky, and applicably enough weird are all going to be thrown at this interesting little stoner story but the one that sticks the most is average. Just average.
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