Review of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992) by Gareth R — 05 Aug 2011

There's a thin but important line between self-awareness and just not trying. Buffy The Vampire Slayer aims for words like "campy", and those involved clearly think it's funny. It's mostly just clumsy pratfalling, and the general tone hovers so close to an all-out spoof that plot and character are irrelevant. The whole thing is tedious and unfunny, but it could have worked had all involved taken things - especially the jokes - more seriously.

You're probably familiar with Buffy from the popular, largely dissimilar TV series. She's a highschool bimbo who discovers she's The Slayer, destined to fight vampires. She gets this news from a musty old guy in a hat and trenchcoat, and believes him almost immediately. Such shrugging character development abounds; people accept the damndest things, such as the existence of vampires and the deaths of friends, and the story just lumbers on. It's full of holes and stuff that doesn't go anywhere, and it's so silly you don't care.

As for the vampires, these are among the least threatening in cinema. Pale-faced, with joke shop fangs and Nosferatu ears, they look and act completely ridiculous, and somehow their not-particularly-hidden existence doesn't seem to bother anyone. (A Teen Wolf-esque basketball match is a particularly weird example of this.) Acting-wise, Paul Reubens seems like he escaped from a Monster Mash, and successfully outhams David Arquette, along with a host of awful vampire extras. Reubens's cartoony death scene is so relentlessly, deliberately awful, it pushes the movie to surreal bad heights. A film would have to be very good to earn this kind of fourth-wall-smashing moment, and Buffy is way off.

There are good actors here, not that they make a difference. Donald Sutherland is Merrick, the Watcher, and despite a restrained performance he looks and sounds preposterous. (Also creepy, showing up in girls' locker rooms to babble about things he must show Buffy.) Whether his total lack of chemistry with Buffy is down to Kristy Swanson's wooden acting, or his own rotten dialogue is unknown. When he leaves the film, and I'll let you guess how, it's a sobering moment as we realise what we're left with. Swanson's romance with Luke Perry is not, to put it lightly, cause for fireworks.

Rutger Hauer is the villain, and the all-over-the-place direction makes it unclear what powers or influence he has. Hauer fails at Dracula-esque seduction, and his silly hair and cape puts paid to any threat value. When his death arrives (a huge anticlimax), it is similarly daffy to that of Reubens. Bela Lugosi's double was more threatening in Plan 9 From Outer Space.

To call this stuff "misjudged" would be a good start, but it's frustratingly easy to imagine it being done well, and not just because of the TV show. Buffy had the potential to be a funny horror movie with an unusual choice of hero. The filmmakers seem to regard Joss Whedon's premise as too goofy to possibly sell, so they go for all out wacky hijinks instead, shortchanging the whole production. You're left so disinterested that you notice bad, gender-swapping stunt doubles, dodgy stunts and supposedly missing limbs clearly jutting out under an actor's shirt. The movie seems to be aiming for exactly that kind of schlocky B-Movie appeal, perhaps arguing that bad effects and stunts are the whole point. But it's not sharp enough to convince as any kind of satire. It's just a bad, stupid movie that should have tried harder.