Review of Tusk (2014) by Mattcipolla926 — 19 Sep 2014

Oh, A24 Films, why did you do this to us? You pamper us with amazing and unique movies like Locke, Spring Breakers, Enemy, and Under the Skin, and then you give us this? Not only is this movie unoriginal and lazy, being derivative of The Human Centipede (which if that’s your starting off point, then you’re already kind of screwed), but it’s also tonally inconsistent and boring.

It starts out okay and has some kind of funny jabs at the Internet, and Justin Long is good (until he’s mutilated to no end) and the other members of the cast are okay. However, it’s so all over the place that it seems like Kevin Smith only did this movie because people on the Internet told him to. There’s nothing interesting happening, you don’t care what happens, and once you get past the 40-minute mark, it has such a jarring drop-off from being just okay to being awful, and from that point its only purpose is to be progressively more obnoxious, unfunny, disgusting, mean-spirited, and incoherent.

Ironically, the wacky “let’s do crazy stuff and then almost say how dumb it is” aspect is counterintuitive and makes the humor come off as cold and further adds to the tonal inconsistencies. The characters are archetypes and don’t really do anything interesting. The script is all over the place and only has enough material to fill 22 minutes, but the final results drags on for 102 minutes. The direction is lazy and annoying; there’s a scene that should honestly last for literally 30 seconds, but it instead goes on for five whole minutes just so they can fill time and say that they have Johnny Depp in their movie, who also does nothing and is totally wasted. There’s even a part where they cut back to a scene from earlier in the film and it isn’t even the exact same scene. It’s edited differently and has different sound mixing, and the result is slightly anachronistic.

The jokes about Canada work once and that’s within the first five minutes or so, and then they keep milking it over and over and over. This honestly began as a joke on Smith’s podcast, and you can totally tell because the filmmakers have no idea what the hell they’re doing or where they’re going. They have stopped caring, which is even further evident in the schlock (and shock) value, despite the fact that it’ll make you want to leave the theater.

They show the big visual reveal (this isn’t a spoiler because it’s be basis of the movie) which is Justin Long mutilated into a crudely-stitched walrus, and that’s all that the movie is building up to, and then it won’t end. They’re running on empty fuel. #WalrusYes should be been #WalrusHellNo, and we can only hope that the potential spin-off of this hot-ass mess doesn’t happen, because this one wasn’t funny, nor was it scary.

3.8/10, really bad, two thumbs down, far below average, etc.