Weekend Movies: Five Reasons to Watch Blood Car

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Alex Orr’s 2007 low budget film Blood Car was recommended to me by a friend. It’s a black comedy with liberal horror throughout. It’s also low budget, which, if you know me, you’ll remember that one of my slogans happens to be, “There’s no budget like low budget.” This one takes some digging to find, but I can tell you right now, it’s memorable. Here are five reasons to watch it this weekend.

Totally worth the one hour and fifteen minutes of “huh” face.

 

#1 – The concept is nuts

Vegan kindergarten teacher Archie (Mike Brune) is looking for a way to get cars running again in a not-too-distant future. Gas has spiked up to $30 per gallon, and ol’ Archie is trying to make an engine that runs on wheatgrass. When he accidentally gets blood into the mixture, he finds that the engine he’s invented will indeed run, but on blood. Hilarity ensues. Yes, it’s cheesy, but within the first five minutes, you know that you’re in for a batshit ride.

#2 – Our main man, Archie

Archie is clueless. He doesn’t get that Lorraine (Anna Chlumsky, who actually puts in an effort at a performance and is totally appealing) likes him, and he doesn’t realize that sexpot Denise (Katie Rowlett) is only interested in him for his car. He also happens to run the strangest kindergarten class on the planet. By the time you get to his outbursts, you’re not sure what kind of deck he’s playing with. It’s humorous. As an aside, I couldn’t tell if Brune was playing him poorly on purpose, or if it’s just bad acting. Time will tell on that one.

A knight in vegan armor.

 

#3 – It rips on veganism

I’m totally fine with people being anything they want to, so long as the person in question is not a douche to anyone else. Veganism is one of those subjects that can go the way of condescention quickly. I don’t care if it’s for health or conscience – your body, man: do what you want, but don’t be a dick to others about their dietary choices (can’t tell that I’ve had that experience, can you?). The way that this one goes after veganism is a bit scathing. It also is a statement on how far people will go for a little sex. Nice moral convictions there, Archie.

#4 – The use of music

Fun fact: classical music is relatively cheap and easy to obtain rights to use. Blood Car takes full advantage of this, and you’ll recognize some of the pieces. Strangely enough, it’s not out of place, and it works. As an added touch, you’re also treated to 80s-style guitar ditties that would feel at-home in a sports training montage. And come on: everyone loves a montage.

#5 – The desperation of getting a car to work
Ever have a lemon you desperately need to work? People will freak out when their cars won’t start. Motivations vary. Greater point is that we’ve all been there. If you have ever needed your car to work – especially if said car is your ticket to sex – then you’ll understand and appreciate this. In the context of this film, the freakouts are glorious.
“Start, goddammit!”

 

Like I said, this one takes some digging to find, but I promise that if you like low budget horror/comedy with a hearty dose of biting commentary, you should seek it out.

 

Come On, Really? Hell Worthy Trespass in The Sentinel

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The Sentinel has some things going for it that I hold dear: Chris Sarandon, a bitching apartment, creepy swinging chandeliers, and Beverly D’Angelo masturbating on a couch. In all seriousness, it’s that last one that got me thinking: it’s the lesbianism of D’Angelo’s Sandra and Sylvia Miles’s Gerde that gets the most raised eyebrows in this film, despite that everyone in that apartment building is a key-holding resident of Hell. So what gives? Why single them out? I’m calling shenanigans on this one and citing the unnecessary demonization of the lesbians amidst far greater crimes.

After two viewings, this one gets bad. Probably always was.

 

Let’s get one thing straight: everyone else that Alison (Cristina Raines) meets in her apartment building is later identified as a murderer, which is pretty hell-worthy, but there’s not much embellishment. We don’t get much backstory on the crimes that landed them there: the most detail we get concerns the character Mrs. Clark, the little old lady at Jezebel the cat’s birthday party. Mrs. Clark was convicted and executed by electric chair for murdering her lover and his wife. Why did she bludgeon them to death with an axe? Her lover wouldn’t leave his wife, which bears a strange parallel to the fact that Alison’s lover Michael (Sarandon) is suspected of murdering his late wife (which we later find out to be true). How do we know that Chazen, twins Emma and Lillian, and married couple Rebecca and Malcolm are murderers? Because one of the detectives proclaims that Alison “went to a party with 8 dead murderers.” We see mug shots and police files, but no details. For all we know, these people killed someone in self-defense. We’re expected to just go with it after one detailed example and some circumstantial evidence. The most we get from the apartment interactions is that they’re overzealous neighbors. Nothing to really make you suspicious there; no one does anything that merits a trip to hell, save a birthday party for a cat.

 

Dinner was killer.

However, the most attention we get in terms of there being a symptom of trouble stems from the interactions with Sandra and Gerde, which are far more sexual in nature than criminal. Alison waltzes into their apartment uninvited and, instead of being scolded or arrested for breaking and entering, is offered coffee, then becomes visibly upset by the fact that Gerde is feeling up Sandra’s leg. The silent Sandra then masturbates in front of Alison, which makes her even more uncomfortable. Uncomfortable to do in front of your neighbors? Depends on who you ask (we at The Backseat Driver are kink-friendly and therefore don’t judge). However, there’s nothing there that would merit eternal damnation. They may not be invited to too many pot luck dinners around the neighborhood for that type of hospitality, but there’s nothing there that merits hell in my book. To drive the point home further, go back and re-watch the scene where Alison is dreaming that she’s at the cat’s party again: Gerde and Sandra are the focal points of who we see stark naked in that sequence. So if the huge crime that gets you into hell is murder, why is the main focus the misguided perception of sexual deviancy? Why the hell is being a horny lesbian such a bad thing? Why not focus on the fact that they had killed people while they were alive, rather than the fact that they felt each other (and themselves) up in front of the WASP-y neighbor?

I get that the book and subsequent film were written in an era where gay rights (as well as kink) had a long way to go; however, that makes it all the more cringe-worthy to see lesbianism singled out here when we take into consideration that gays are people too, and that their actions involving sexual preference are not bad. The dead Michael tells Alison toward the climax, “The people you saw here – the lesbians, all of them, are reincarnations.” Even Michael singles them out! A man that murdered his wife lists lesbianism as an instance of demonic manifestation. They don’t even get names at this point – they’re known simply as “the lesbians,” which is insulting because it strips away any other aspect that makes them human beings. Sandra and Gerde aren’t people anymore, with names and backstories and crimes that got them a hot ticket to Hell – nope, they’re lesbians, which defines them far more than any crime could have. Nevermind that the rest of the group has been condemned as murderers – the lesbianism is the true crime here if we follow the verbiage and reactions of the other characters, an act that’s even more outrageous than the taking of someone’s life. The only other people that are subjected to this type of judgment by both Alison and the audience are Alison’s father and his group sex partners, which, again… that’s in the eye of the beholder. Having a threesome with women that aren’t your wife is no less damnation-worthy than sexual perference, and certainly nowhere on par with killing another human being. To give sexual orientation and kink the same degraded status as a murderer means that any deviation from the social perception of normal was viewed as punishable by an eternity of pain and suffering.

 

If this is the gateway to hell, I’m in trouble.

 

That’s why I’m calling shenanigans on The Sentinel. I can live with the implausibilities. I can live with a fully furnished Brownstone apartment costing $400 dollars a month. I can live with the hammy acting of pretty much the entire cast, who are phoning it in so hard that I can hear the train conductor paging overhead. I can get past the melodramatic music and the 70s fashion. I can even see past the fact that Ava Gardner doesn’t age while Cristina Raines goes from 25 to 70 in three minutes. But what I can’t take is the lumping of sexual orientation into hell. Fuck that shit right there.

Posting in That’s Not Current

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As promised, I have some contributions over at That’s Not Current. Click on over to view me rambling about Groundhog Day. 



It’s also worth saying that my comrades over there are producing some excellent work. Articles by Rebecca Booth (wicked smart), Glenn Miller (best name ever), and Kieran Fisher (just plain cool) are all worth a read. I’m omitting other folks, and for that I apologize, because the work there is stellar. There’s new content every day. So yourself a favor and come play with us. We don’t bite.

Who The Hell Is Funding This?! The Implausibility of Jurassic World

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I am a sucker for a dinosaur. Always have been, since childhood, despite that it wasn’t “cool” for little girls to dig dinosaurs (or stars for that matter). I remember the acute terror felt at going to see the first installment of Jurassic Park in 1993 as the T. Rex stepped onto the screen, the surround sound blaring and shaking my frame as that monster tormented those two kids in the Jeep. It was terrifying and fantastic all at once, and played right to my sense of dino-wonder. It was a success, so it got what all successful movies received: a half-baked sequel. I did not love The Lost World: Jurassic Park, but damned if I didn’t go to the theatre to see it. The third one was just plain stupid, but again, I watched it because dinosaurs. Once we hit Jurassic World, I was ready for something new. The result? A decent enough thrill ride, but really, you can’t help but wonder: who on earth is dumb enough to keep bankrolling this place after the first three massacres? The answer lies in equal parts stupidity and greed, by both the characters and the producers.

Sucker for a dinosaur.

 

The simple fact is that these characters fall perfectly in line with the way that people behave in their misguided need to play King of the Mountain. Whereas the first film was more so governed by a love of science, the second and third films saw individuals that kept returning to the island as a way to try to conquer the dinosaurs – in essence, to assert their dominance over something ancient, whether it was a guided tour or the promise of more science if someone could just get one quick glimpse of something naturally forbidden. Jurassic World is no different in this aspect: the dinosaurs are all fairly neutered, from their literal inability to reproduce to their status as oversized zoo attractions. Really, it’s no better than SeaWorld at some points, and yet the audience is thrilled because they get to see something that could potentially kill them subdued and performing for them; in this respect, they dominate, even if it’s not a completely natural environment. This need is typified by Henry Wu (Benedict Wong)’s speech: “You act like we are engaged in some kind of mad science, but we are doing what we have done from the beginning. Nothing in Jurassic World is natural. We have always filled gaps in the genome with the DNA of other animals, and if their genetic code was pure, many of them would look quite different but you didn’t ask for reality – you asked for more teeth.” The folks in this universe accept the notion of possibly becoming the latest in a chapter of mass death event because they want to feel like the top of the evolutionary chain, whether they want to admit to that bargain or not.

 

Yeah, this totally looks like a good idea.

 

Let’s not forget the other reason why this sequel has been allowed to happen: money. Much like the producers of the film hoping to get their hands on the hard-earned cash of movie goers, the investors and team behind the fictional Jurassic World funciton under the same principles. Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) tells Owen (Chris Pratt) at one point, “We’ve been pre-booking tickets for months. The park needs a new attraction every few years in order to reinvigorate the public’s interest…. Corporate felt genetic modification would up the wow factor.” Anyone with a shred of common sense could tell you that the notion of genetic modifcation would be a bad idea as a best-case scenario. In fact, we’ve had at least three instances where this was proven. What happened in the first film? Corporate greed led to death. Second film? Spliced genes led to dinosaurs reproducing and killing everything in sight. Third film? More death. However, there’s money to be made, and as Claire romances potential investors, she pitches a good sell: they will be relevant; it’s good exposure for their company; dinosaurs are a hot ticket item, and their association with them will bring more money to the company. As soon as the carnage starts, though, the focus does not shift to loss of human life: the first thing everyone thinks about is how swiftly the lawsuits will come, and how everyone is going to be out of a job in the morning. All efforts are made to contain the Indominus Rex rather than disrupt the viewing experience because if word gets out that people are dying or in danger, the park will lose a shitload of money, and nobody wants that.

 

It’s this scenario that provides a perfect combination of just why this disatrous idea of a theme park keeps getting green lit despite that we all know it’s a terrible idea: people are willing to pay a lot of money in order to feel like they have power. This is not a new concept: Eli Roth took it to the extreme in the Hostel films, with individuals paying top dollar in order to control someone’s torture and death. It’s the same thing with Jurassic World: as dumb as it is to think that Chris Pratt can control a gaggle of Velociraptors by holding his hands in a stop position, we buy it because we like to think that we too could have some hope of surviving extreme conditions. As human beings, we want to be what comes out on top. We want to dominate, even if it means that someone else is going to get killed in the process. We all secretly hope that we’re going to be part of the survivors that make it off the island rather than become part of the inevitable doom fest that’s a dinosaur’s next meal.

 

It always ends like this.

 

It’s a rather Faustian bargain that we accept with these films: a semblence of power traded for a financial gain. That we keep putting our trust in these films displays how base we really are: we like to see the cool dinosaurs. We want to experience that sense of wonder, of feeling small yet protected. We want to feel like the most powerful thing in the world. And above all, deep down, we really don’t think anything bad can happen to us; that fate’s for someone else.

Coming This Week

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After a week of being sick, I’m finally on the mend.

Love this raccoon more than life itself.

Hopefully, this means that my posts this week are coherent, as I wrote some of them with a fever while the medication kicked in (gotta love bronchitis). This week, we’re going to have some fun, with some of the larger questions in life, like why in the hell the park got funded in Jurassic World, and how someone could think that being a lesbian is equivalent to murder with our old friend The Sentinel. We’ll round out with a recommendation for an completely insane indie flick. So grab a glass of something, sit back, and listen to me rant. We’ll have fun.

Saturday Shorts: #NoFilter

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I’ll cop to taking some selfies; everyone does it. It was only inevitable that it would soon become the subject of a horror film: after all, it’s an exploration of the self and how others perceive us (not to mention what we consider to be our ideals of both beauty and the self). Two pieces that feature very heavily in horror, and rather relevant in this day and age. For what it’s worth, I don’t think the practice is entirely bad when used in moderation – millennials are to be praised for their self-love, if only because, so often, people have trouble expressing what it is about themselves that is both beautiful and deserving of affection. We’re often made to feel that it’s only polite to be self-depricating, and the practice can be used to help embrace what’s good about your exterior. However, if taken to an extreme, it can be bad. So bearing that in mind, here’s #NoFilter, which hails from the Phillippines.

 

Director/writer/editor Luigi Rosario did a fine job with this one. It starts off normal enough – a young woman taking some pictures as she goes about her morning routine. But then – and this is the hallmark of horror done right – something odd gets thrown into the mix. One tiny little kink, and it goes from ordinary to nightmarish. I loved that this one didn’t have to rely on words, and that the focus really was on the imagery/pictures. We got to see the young woman first, then what her obsession was doing to her, then the complete breakdown before the cycle began again. Which begs the question: in the end, are we all just really wearing masks when we present a photograph of ourselves to the world?

Happy Saturday.

Weekend Movies: Five Reasons to Watch Deathgasm

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Kieran Fisher, of That’s Not Current and Bloodbath and Beyond, recommended Deathgasm to me last month. I was assured that I had to see it. I was told I was going to love it, because it was funny and probably a bit too close to my teenage years than I want to recall (okay, I wasn’t so much a metal head, but we had one in our group and we loved him and it counts). I had heard some good things about it, so I figured what the hell and popped it in. Plus, Kieran’s got good taste in horror films, so I had that working for me. I’m happy to report that Deathgasm is great. Here are five reasons to watch it this weekend.

This film fills me with so much joy.

 

#1 – Our hero is likable

Metalheads get a bad wrap, yet they’re often the nicest (not to mention the smartest) guys in the room. Our protagonist, Brodie (Milo Cawthorne), is both brutally honest and a decent guy going through some tough times. The way that he articulates his love of metal speaks to why a lot of people I know listen to it. Come to think of it, he reminded me a lot of my friend Jeff, who to this day is both a proud metalhead and one of the best-read people I know. If you’re going to go in to battle demons for an hour and half, I can’t think of a better kind of guy to follow.

#2 – Garage band realness

Confession time: I was briefly in a band. We sucked. However, if you’ve ever played in a garage band, you’ll know that you thought you were the coolest shit in the world at the time. At least one of you couldn’t play, you tried to come up with the best name your teenage brain could think of (and it was really bad), and your songs were terrible. And a good time was had by all. If this is in your past, you will be taken back immediately.

I can identify with this.

 

#3 – The character development is tight

These characters start out as stereotypes: the bullying jock, the nerd, the metalhead, the pretty girl. However, we get to see them grow a bit. Points especially to the character Medina (Kimberley Crossman) or not being some damsel in distress; our ladies run the perilous risk of becomng objects as opposed to participants, and her evolution was a joy to watch. Points to writer/director Jason Lei Howden for this.

#4 – There’s a lot of fake blood

Fake blood is fantastic. I adore nothing more than a huge amount of it being sprayed from all directions. Some girls want romance and flowers; I want enough fake blood to fill an olympic-sized swimming pool. This film delivers. Oh does it deliver. When I cackle and ask to rewind something, you know that it’s good. This is oh so satisfying on the blood factor.

#5 – It’s really funny

This one knows how to deliver different aspects of comedy. The one-liners are great. The sarcasm is incredible. The visual gags are wonderful. Really, any film that can craft a fight sequence around sex toys successfully to a metal soundtrack is something magical. It’s the perfect marriage you didn’t know you needed in your life. It’s hysterical and you will absolutely love it.

Quite possibly my favorite date scene ever.

 

Run, do not walk, over to Amazon.com and rent this bad boy this weekend. Trust me on this. Totally worth the time and money.

Hell in a Handbasket: Haywire Edition

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At the risk of offending someone, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that Steven Soderbergh isn’t my favorite by a long shot. He’s got some good things going for him at times, but his method of storytelling just isn’t my bag – I find it drags, and that’s just my opinion. I own that opinion, and I typically stay away from his work because I find it antagonistic (and there are so many other things I could focus on, like Blood Car). However, when Haywire came out, I was thrilled to death because female action stars – the ones that kick ass just as hard as the boys – are few and far between, and that’s a fucking shame. It’s a resource that still needs tapping, because women can be totally badass. I couldn’t wait to see Gina Carano in action. When I did… I was underwhelmed. Which kills me, because I had wanted to like it. Here are the reasons why it went to hell in a handbasket.

So much potential.

 

Misuse of Gina Carano

I get that a woman is often portrayed as eye candy in action films; likewise, our male action stars are objectified just as heavily, from their washboard abs to their tight t-shirts and swishing hair. This film can’t decide if it wants Carano to be a sexpot, a fashionista, or one of the boys. Now I’m not saying that women need to fit into one role or the other exclusively. Merely observing that Soderbergh didn’t know what to do with her at times, as she fit a little too well into each role without any of the struggle she proclaimed she’d experience. She went from one extreme to the other without much in between, and that, to me, did not feel authentic, especially for someone who claimed to feel far more at ease as one of the boys with a sniper rifle. Which hurts, because her voice is nice and low, she’s built like an actual woman that has muscle tone, and she looks like she can do some decent stunt work. Speaking of stunts (fighting in particular)…

The fight scenes

For covert black ops agents, these people are messy fighters, and I don’t mean that as complimentary in any way. There’s brutal, there’s sucker punch, and then there’s haphazard. Go back and look beyond some of the fight scenes: the punches and kicks are sloppy and uncontrolled. Want a new drinking game? Take a swig every time that someone leaves his or her side open. You don’t do that if you’re highly trained. Hell, I’m not trained, and even I know this. Also, there are many awkward pauses in the fight scenes. There’s a punch, and then there’s way too much time in between the next hit. Again, I can’t imagine that someone from an elite group would leave that much of an opportunity in between hits. Don’t give your enemies a chance to hit back so that the scene can be extended. Be a professional and end it. You don’t like loose ends? Aim for the eyes, then take out the elbow. If you have to shoot, go for the head. It’s that simple.

The pacing

Can someone get out of this car and help push it toward the end? Because the pacing on this thing slowed to a crawl. I found myself waiting for the next action sequence, because at least then, I had the chance to feel something, even if it was disbelief that special ops agents were so slow. The rest of it just felt like filler. Worse, it felt like filler designed around pretty people looking serious. For a 92-minute movie, it sure as hell felt a lot longer. I shouldn’t be looking at the clock that much. Really, I could make myself a sandwich, check my email and fold laundry before anything meaningful happened.

Walk faster, dammit.

The soundtrack
I can get behind funk, though you may not want to see me dancing in my kitchen (it makes the baby Jesus cry.). However, the soundtrack of this film goes from lone guitar and bass lines to horn and wah-wah pedal-driven funk. I get that Soderbergh is going for potbroiler action vibe ala the 1970s. The problem here is that it doesn’t fully gel. Want to know what worked for another action flick? The techno in John Wick. The beat helped with getting your heart pumping. This one made me want to smoke a cigarette and have a drink. Not exactly the vibe that goes along with an action flick. It would have been a good soundtrack on a different film without a doubt, but for this one, no.

ACTING

Ever see the bit from Saturday Night Live with Jon Lovitz yelling, “AAAAAAAAAACCCCCCTINNNNNNNNNNG!”? Let’s just say that Channing Tatum is phoning it in. Gina Carano isn’t an actress, and it shows. Fassbender (who I don’t mind as an actor, but looks fucking rough for dude that’s not even 40) tried, but Douglas, Banderas, Paxton and McGregor? Nope. Soderbergh even wasted a perfectly good Michael Angarano, who I actually enjoy despite the fact that he looks 12. How do you take a cast this good and make them completely bland? It’s an honest question. Please feel free to chime in and help me, because it felt like everyone went, “Yeah, Steven wants us to do a movie. It’s a check. what the hell.”

Not without my beige cap

Call me crazy, but when you’re on the run, the goal is to blend in and not have signature outfits that would make you easily identifiable, right? Good god, nothing like a bright beige hat to make you stand out in a crowd. Even when she put on a hoodie, she was still wearing that stupid thing. Non-descript baseball cap, Mallory. Emphasis on “non-descript.” It’s all about blending in. And don’t even get me started on the time she took to put her hair into cornrows for the big battles. I want you to be able to enjoy time with your loved ones, and we’ll be here all night.

Baby, I know we’ve only just met…

…okay, maybe not just met. But for two people that had a one-night stand in Barcelona about a week prior, there was a lot of emotional attachment played up upon the death of Mr. Charming Potato. Now some on-screen couples, we can totally buy this dynamic in a short time frame, because they click immediately and have insane chemistry. It helps establish the willing suspension of disbelief. These two? There was potential, but again, it felt like no one knew what to do with these two. They have about as much raw sexuality as a steamed carrot atop a bed of overcooked spinach. I’ll let you decide which one is which.

Just wait for the tide

Have you never watched a James Bond film, Mallory? Don’t let the bad guy live, even if it looks like he’s close to dying. Don’t walk away; wait until he’s confirmed dead. Don’t just assume that he’s going to drown. Given, that’s how you wind up with a sequel, but it’s also how you wind up dead. For someone who proclaimed not to like loose ends, she certainly left one. Grab a flask with some aged whiskey and watch, lady. He just put you through hell; smile and wave as the tide comes in. Don’t just walk away.

Ugh.

 

The empty airport at the transfer of Jiang

No airport is that empty, ever. No. Not buying it.

If you’re smart, you’ve avoided this one. If not, you’re comiserating. Either way, at least Soderbergh picked the right name for this one. It certainly felt like a mess.

Annoucement: New Site

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We’re expanding! By “we,” I mean me and the gremlin in my pocket.

New and shiny, people.

Starting in the coming weeks, I’ll be acting as a contributor to a brand-new site: That’s Not Current. The site is going to be looking back at… well, things that aren’t current, but for which we all happen to house a soft spot. Topics are going to range from film to music to pretty much anything else we can cook up. The team is wicked cool, and I’m extraordinarily proud to be working with them. Really, these guys and gals are talented, from writers to podcasters to reviewers. The site’s currently under construction, but the light is going to turn green pretty soon.

As this site is separate from The Backseat Driver Reviews, you’ll be treated to different content from me. Coming up in February, you can look forward to That’s Not Current posts about Groundhog Day, why Aliens is good Valentine’s Day viewing, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter in time for President’s Day, and a look back at a girlhood favorite of mine (House, duh). It’s going to be a great ride, so please join us.

Where We Go One, We Go All: Twins as Whole in Goodnight Mommy

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Goodnight Mommy is one of those films that will take your biological clock, kick it in the teeth, shove it into a trunk and dump it in the ocean. I will never again make a joke about my kids staging a mutiny and tying me to a chair. Writer/directors Verokina Franz and Severin Fiala certainly did an extraordinary job with creating a taut mystery. The most intriguing aspect of it, for me, was the way in which the relationship between Elias (Elias Schwarz) and Lukas (Lukas Schwarz) is portrayed as opposites as opposed to dual images of each other, proving that the duo needed each other in order to function as a cohesive unit.

Hide yo kids.

 

It’s no secret that twins often have similar personalities, functioning as a type of mirror image of each other; however, Elias and Lukas deviate from the notion of in-tune twins to present opposites in appearance insomuch as they can. Specifically, the boys differentiate through clothing color choices. While the clothing they wear is a standard childhood uniform – tank tops and shorts – one can’t help but notice that Elias and Lukas are dressed in the same exact style without variation on the individual pieces. No one has a trademark baseball cap or handkerchief poking out of a back pocket – these two have to look as close to the same as possible. Variations on this theme include the red (Lukas) and blue (Elias) tank tops worn during play time, the black (Lukas)/white (Elias) comination of exploration clothes, and the gray/navy tank tops with the same pyjama bottoms. The boys are dressed in a type of uniform to mark their solidarity, but each one requires oppositional clothing in order to establish who is Lukas and who is Elias.
It’s this establishment that solidifies the two personalities: the “good” twin Elias versus the “bad” twin Lukas. Lukas is the trouble maker: as reflected in his longer hair, he’s a bit more wild and defiant than his brother Elias. Lukas is largely ignored by The Mother (Susanne Wuest) for the bulk of the film, while the more obedient Elias is rewarded with food and speech. Lukas is the one that instigates with ideas, from rescuing the cat, Leo, to tying up the boys’ mother. So while he is more quiet, Lukas is ultimately the one that bears the worst ideas, translating into actions that begin as childhood annoyances toward an adult and culminate with torture. After all, it is Elias that pauses and considers letting The Mother go when she is tied to the bed; it’s Elias that has moments of sympathy and doubt as to whether or not what they’re doing to her is right. Elias is the one that tells his brother to apologize to their mother. Elias is the one that looks directly at his mother rather than turning his head away. Elias is the one that wears the guilty expression when she cries from being burned with the magnifying glass. One is distinctly good, while the other is decidedly more antagonistic in nature. While they look alike and dress alike, the way each behaves represents a polar opposite.

 

It’s staring you right in the face.

 

Which is why it makes sense that in the end, we find out that the boys are one and the same. Lukas is a representation of a dead child, designed to help Elias cope with the fact that his twin brother is not there with him. As such, Elias needs to present himself as a “we,” thus splitting his personality into two archetypes in order to achieve a single identity through what he believes are two separate people; they need to be halves of a whole because the whole is Elias. In the beginning, there are repetitions of Elias searching for Lukas: in the cornfield, near the tunnel in the woods, on the water. It makes sense that Elias refers to himself as “we,” asking The Mother “where our mother went” to assert that Lukas still exists; Elias needs him to exist, so he has split himself in half to create the twin and reclaim him from death. In order to achieve this end, Lukas is a mirror image, though his clothing starts out as slightly different in color: Elias uses the reference point of himself to create the other half that he feels is missing. That is why they have to lay on either side of the dead cat: same position, opposite sides. That is why, when punching each other in the bathtub, the boys go for opposite sides: it’s shadow boxing. When they fight in the bathroom later oni n the film, they are bleeding from the same side of the nose, indicating that the injury is the same. It also explains the mortal terror that Elias feels when their mother tries to get her child to repeat that he won’t talk to Lukas anymore: “She wants to tear us apart.” Elias has already ripped his psyche in half to account for the missing brother; he has given half of himself to make his brother real. To negate that portion therefore means that he would not be an entire person, because he identifies as only one half – the good twin, the one that listens to his mother and feels sympathy. This is why the boys need to don identical green-and-red masks. This is why Elias cuts Lukas’s hair and dresses him in identical clothing halfway through the film so that “she can’t tell us apart.” Elias needs his brother as psychological necessity in order to exist. The thought of separation is therefore not real to him, as he cannot process life without his twin.

 

Two of a kind.

 

When the identity is threatened with the confrontation of reality, the two halves team up in order to maintain the need to function as a whole, a defense mechanism is that willing to kill in order to maintain the protective schema. The grand irony of this exercise is that the audience does not know what Lukas’s personality was like prior to the events of the film – we never actually get to know the real Lukas, just how Elias has represented him in order to fill in the blanks of his fractured mind. The Lukas we see is what allows Elias to have a daily life: it is the piece of himself that he has given in order to continue living. In the end, the child does what he can in order to remain whole; for some, being whole just happens to mean that someone else is so integral to your identity that you need to manufacture that person – to sacrifice and transpose yourself – in order to carry on in that person’s absence.