Movie Review

The Peanut Butter Falcon is grounded by earnest but inept filmmaking

Zack Gottsagen and Shia LaBeouf in The Peanut Butter Falcon.

Photo by Seth Johnson; courtesy of Roadside Attractions and Armory Films

The Peanut Butter Falcon is a unique film in that its star, Zack Gottsagen, has Down syndrome, and because the two directors/writers, Tyler Nilson and Mike Schwartz, made the movie specifically for their friend to be given an opportunity that would otherwise be unlikely. You’d have to be one hard-hearted person not to be moved just by those circumstances.

Gottsagen plays Zak, a ward of the state of North Carolina who’s forced to live in a retirement home because it can provide the best care for him. He longs to escape, though, specifically to a wrestling school farther south run by The Salt Water Redneck (Thomas Haden Church). Aided by his roommate Carl (Bruce Dern), he makes a break for it, soon running into Tyler (Shia LaBeouf), who’s on the lam for a completely different reason.

Tyler agrees to help Zak get to the wrestling school, and the two are soon trekking their way through fields and on rivers to make their way there. On their trail is Eleanor (Dakota Johnson), who looks after Zak at the retirement home, and Duncan (John Hawkes), a fisherman who has a beef with Tyler.

The biggest reason the film works to any degree is the performances of and chemistry between Gottsagen and LaBeouf. Gottsagen has an affability and charm that is immediately apparent, and it becomes even more so after he teams up with LaBeouf. Unlike most other characters, Tyler treats Zak with respect, and LaBeouf’s performance is the lynchpin for making the character and relationship believable.

What becomes very clear as the film goes along, however, is the lack of experience of the filmmakers. The journey of Zak and Tyler is haphazard at best, giving them no clear direction. As a consequence, they meet up with other characters at random, with little or no connection between how any of them got to that particular place. It’s a shortcut way of filmmaking that’s big on significant moments but very light on narrative coherence.

For a film led by first-time feature filmmakers, it’s absolutely bonkers how many well-known people are in it. In addition to the five actors in the main cast, veteran wrestlers Mick Foley and Jake “The Snake” Roberts, and rapper Yelawolf all make appearances. Jon Bernthal, who’s arguably the best actor in the cast, was somehow convinced to show up for a non-speaking role as Tyler’s brother, Mark, a move that makes zero sense for either the filmmakers or Bernthal.

There’s never a point in The Peanut Butter Falcon where you’re not rooting for Zak to succeed, but the film as a whole doesn’t come close to delivering the emotional release it needs.

Movie Review

Faces of Death returns with modern twist on cult horror film

Dacre Montgomery in Faces of Death

Photo courtesy of of IFC Films

Dacre Montgomery in Faces of Death.

True horror fans will likely be familiar with the 1978 cult film Faces of Death, which purported to be a documentary showing real-life killings in gory detail. It didn’t, of course, but that didn’t stop rumors from continuing to spread for decades. Now, almost 50 years and multiple sequels later, comes a new version of Faces of Death, an actual movie that pays homage to the original in interesting ways.

Margot (Barbie Ferreira) works at a YouTube-like company called Kino as a content moderator, flagging videos that violate the company’s policies. This means her job often involves seeing some truly despicable things from all manner of depraved people. One day, though, she comes across a video that seems a little too real, and after seeing more similar videos, she starts to believe they’re genuine murders.

Going against her company NDA, she starts to investigate the videos on her own, which puts her on the radar of Arthur (Dacre Montgomery), who is actually kidnapping people and killing them on camera through methods seen in the original Faces of Death film. It’s not long before Arthur tracks her down, with a plan to make her one of his next victims.

Written and directed by Daniel Goldhaber (How to Blow Up a Pipeline) and co-written by Isa Mazzei, the film is not so much scary as it is creepy, with the occasional gross-out sequence. The idea of having someone emulate the killings in the cult film is a good idea, and pairing it with the modern-day attention economy - in which content creators go to increasing lengths for clicks - is a clever twist on a concept that other films have done.

The film as a whole is a commentary on how social media and video sharing sites have often decided to prioritize profits over the well-being of their users. Margot is shown allowing videos involving violence and sexual assault to stay on the site while nixing ones depicting how to use Narcan or demonstrating putting on a condom on a banana. Josh (Jermaine Fowler), Margot’s boss, is even explicit in the company mandate that outrageous videos drive views.

While Arthur has the makings of a good villain, there are few attempts to make him seem truly diabolical. His kidnappings often seem more spur-of-the-moment than calculated, and even though he has a well thought-out dungeon at home, the house’s location in the suburbs seems to make him vulnerable to easy discovery. Goldhaber and Mazzei leave more than a few unanswered questions along the way that take away from the intensity of the story.

Ferreira is yet another actor from Euphoria who’s capitalizing on her exposure from that show. She plays Margot’s increasing anxiety well, and when the action ratchets up in the final act, she meets the moment in a satisfying way. Montgomery returns to the vibe he had while playing the evil Billy on Stranger Things, and even though his character doesn’t fully live up to his potential, Montgomery sells his evil for all it’s worth.

The new Faces of Death may not be what some are expecting given the reputation of the previous films, but it’s a solid horror/thriller that uses the brand as a launching pad into something different. It doesn’t make much of a dent in the scare department, but it does give its violence and gore a degree of relevance in today’s often desensitized world.

---

Faces of Death is now playing in theaters.

Loading...