Halloween Horror Movie 31 for 31: We Are Legion. Day 12: Society
Welcome to my annual 31 for 31! This year I’ll be watching 31 horror films submitted by people to me from various communication platforms. They can be good films, bad films, films you saw when you were 9 and maybe don’t hold up anymore, the sky is the limit unless its a space horror movie in which case the sky is not the limit.
I don’t know…uh…this is really weird and while I think I liked it boy it is a very distinct cup of tea that I am not sure I’d recommend to everyone. The first 90% is merely strange and a little hard to suss out exactly what is happening and then the last 15 minutes come. That had me just looking directly at my screen not blinking or really able to process what I was seeing, mostly just too shocked to even take notes. And not really shocking in the way that its so violent or so realistic you’re shook as a result of watching it, its the opposite really, its silly and strange and not realistic looking at all. But the actors are so earnest in the scene you’re just, I don’t know, confused I guess. A lot of concepts and ideas the movie hints at all come together at once but since its not really sure exactly why this is happening you as the audience have no hope either. Its just an orgy of Cronenberg-esq body horror but without any of the budget or technique used to make that gross, so again its just weird and confusing. I’m talking around it a bunch because its the reason to watch this movie, the rest of the runtime is just kind of a high school hijinx comedy with occasional murder, all pretty standard 80s ‘we’re not quite sure what genre this is’ stuff. But the end is wild and while you could just youtube that bit I think without any context it wouldn’t hit at all. So you did need to sit and patiently wait for your candy, but it is quite good and quite gross at the same time. Like mystery jelly beans but instead of lemon and then ear wax its teen drama and not wanting to see a hand go into a butt.
The Director is Brian Yuzna and I love Brian Yuzna because he wrote Honey, I Shrunk The Kids and probably could have run with that success to be a Disney guy or a kids movie guy and a billionaire. But instead he said ‘Nay!’, I want to use that leverage to Direct some scripts he liked and Produce a few others, none of which are kids movies. He basically chose to go make B-Movies because he liked them. In a small 2 year span he produced Re-Animator, Directed Society and the also pretty awesome Bride of Re-Animator. And I’m not going to sit here and tell you he is an amazing Director but he is a genre Director, he knows exactly what he is making and who he is making it for but he almost always includes some themes and extra thought to at least make it stand out. Same goes for here, this is a Paranoid thriller top to bottom with body horror elements that are hinted throughout but not brought to your eye entirely until the end. Now to do body horror right you need good Practical effects so in comes Joji Tani a.k.a. Screaming Mad George, a Japanese effects wizard who worked on Predator and some of the Nightmare on Elm Street sequels. His calling card is just being wildly creative which suits this film’s needs and indeed Yuzna liked him so much he did effects work on almost all his other movies. Now again the effects aren’t super realistic in a Cronenberg way but they are inventive and gross, I am honestly stunned they got actors to agree to most of the stuff required when in the makeup. One particular shot involving an older man and a cigar is…bone chilling contextually. Once again I’m just kinda saying the rest of the movie is whatever and then the last 20 hits you like a Mac truck.
Actors, well I recognized almost no one in this movie and indeed almost everyone in this movie does not have a wikipedia page, they do have an IMDB pages but the most known for in those is typically Society. Our protagonist is played by Billy Warlock who was on a lot of Baywatch and a lot a lot of Days of Our Lives which makes sense because he is a good looking dude. I mostly thought of him as if Ryder Strong and Emilo Esteves had a child together. He is…good, I think finding out he’s a Soap actor works because he acts like a Soap actor in that is always very over the top which kinda works in this. I think the sheer level of insane things that happen to him in a 72-ish hour period would get some different and less silly reactions but knowing Yuzna these are probably exactly what he wanted. I mean this guy is there to look great and kinda stumble around. It’s actually interesting in the context of the movies’ world even though Billy is incredibly handsome, captain of the Basketball team and about to win class president he’s treated as the outsider nerd loser character by everyone else because he’s not ‘of high society’. Normally he’s the villain in this kind of movie so that’s interesting I guess. Pretty much every other actor in this seems like they’re long journeyperson character actors, commercial actors, Soap actors and TV actors and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that but they’re not important to the story character wise. It’s hard to explain without spoiling it all but their job is to be snobby upper crust folks and kind of obviously evil and you know they all do that just fine.
In the most reductive way possible the only character that really matters other than Billy is the only non-white character in the movie which also feels by design as well. And that would be Devin DeVasquez, Devin is a former Playboy Playmate and was in a lot of 90s era Cinemax late night movies and one Andy Sidaris film which is an entirely different list. Devin plays Clarissa who is hyper aggressively sexual which again considering all these kids are in high school is a little weird, I couldn’t really figure out her character for a while but I kind of settled on because she is the only non-white person she is the outcast and is used by…Society in a specific way as a temptress and doesn’t seem to really understand or see a role for herself outside of that. She basically doesn’t know how to act in a situation that isn’t involving her performing lewd or dirty acts for her partner so much so that when she offers Tea to Billy post spending the night together she specifically asks him if he wants her to pee in it. Which is weird at the time but as things go on you come to understand why that is her viewpoint. That’s really it, I mean there are a couple other cookie cutter stock characters played totally to par but nothing to highlight or mention.
Like any good paranoia movie this one opens on and immediately establishes your main character of Bill(Billy Warlock) as someone who doesn’t feel like he belongs. Billy is the son of Jim and Nancy Whitney, an extremely wealthy and powerful couple in Beverly Hills, he also has a younger sister Jenny. Due to not looking anything like his parents and his parents generally treating him with disdain Billy has always kind of believed he was adopted and has also always done his utmost to live up to their expectations. He is a straight A student, he is a top Athlete, he takes excellent care of himself, he dresses well, everything you could want. But his parents only have eyes for his sister who is close to her ‘Coming Out’ party which may be a real thing that rich people do to show that their Daughter is now old enough to marry into high society and if so thats really creepy and if not its a good believable invention for this movie. We open on Jenny’s ex boyfriend David breaking into her house to try and talk to her saying he knows something is going on. Bill immediately throws him out and is chastised by his parents for having such low class friends. We go to Bill’s therapist who is, in my non professional opinion, really bad at his job in that he just keeps telling Billy his fears are not founded and he should stop complaining. We setup another subplot of Billy running for class president and another subplot of him struggling to get into his girlfriends pants and another subplot of him not being the best of friends to his only real friend, Milo.
I’m here to tell you right now that literally none of that matters and most of it will be dropped or forgotten about by the end. Let me save you 45 minutes, he doesn’t win class president, he sleeps with a different girl instead and Milo is supposed to save the day but does nothing. Here is the plot summary to get you to the bit that matters. Billy is made aware that not all is what it seems with his high society family and friends, that they may be up to some really heinous stuff behind closed doors, we’re talking cult secret society stuff. Incest, murder, orgies, cannibalism, etc. but the person telling him this is not entirely reliable plus things he sees and hears tend to change when someone else sees or hears them. So is Billy losing it? Or is he being groomed by his ‘family’ for some kind of cult ceremony? I mean obviously the second one right? Who are we kidding here? But again it doesn’t matter, you know where this is going right away the trick is that when you get there it is 100x more wild and insane than you thought it would be. And that is worth the price of admission.
The downside is of course when the end happens there is no room for exposition or dialogue, you’re just along for the ride at that point and like most movies of this era it just ends immediately after the climax so you get no follow up to better understand things. They say some vague things to explain away what is happening and I am honestly not entirely sure if they’re accurate or just an interpretation of things. It probably doesn’t matter but its kinda fun to think or talk it over.
That’s it really, its a 3 act play where only the final act matters but what a final act it is! Gross and weird and goopy and wet and sticky and just bizarre. I’ve seen a lot of movies and a lot of things in movies but I can honestly say I don’t really know if I have seen anything quite like the last 20 minutes of this movie. I’m still not sure that is a good thing but it is at least an interesting thing so for me this is a watch, one and done never watch again but you have to see it to believe it. The part of it where it tries to be four or five different teen high school sex comedies/dramas is where its not very successful but I think they understood that they couldn’t just go to the finale without any build up so eh its serviceable for that
