(note: there are some spoilers in this post, but then the title of the movie itself is a bit of a spoiler. I’m not really giving much away that you can’t already guess.)
So I made it out Friday night, just in guy mode, to see the midnight screening of Amateur Porn Star Killer at Laemmle’s Sunset 5. I’d have to say I thought it was brilliantly done, though it’s going to be a tough sell. It’s one of those films that you’re either going to really love or really hate. And you could make an argument for it either way – is it morally bankrupt dreck or a brilliant and challenging art film? I’d go with the latter, but yeah, it is pretty disturbing. I felt a bit shook up afterwards, and driving home the city just seemed really nasty and menacing.
What I really admired, though, about the movie is the sheer ballsiness of the filmmaker Shane Ryan. He’s obviously not afraid to look at his own dark side. He was there at the screening and he seems like a perfectly normal and polite young guy. He plays the killer himself in the movie, though for much of the film he’s offscreen. We just hear his voice behind the camera as he talks to his victim. He plays the role perfectly, though, and in an interview (links below) he talks about how tough and emotionally draining it was to stay in such a dark place for so long. During the screening he also showed a trailer for another film, and an earlier short film, both of which also dealt with some pretty dark stuff – sex, incest, violence, and still more murder.
The movie has a simple but brilliant concept. Some young sleazeball talks this shy young girl into his car and off to his crappy motel room and then proceeds to degrade and videotape her. And I’m not giving anything away here, even the poster says exactly what you’re going to see. I mean, it’s totally sick, and is filmed as though we’re watching an actual snuff film – not a particularly “fun” experience. The pacing is also very slow, and the camera is endlessly jumpy and the motel room poorly lit. Lots of times it’s tough to even tell what’s really going on. One reviewer called it “Ted Bundy with a video camera.” You’re basically watching a young girl shut down emotionally over the course of 71 minutes as it dawns on her what a horrible situation she’s gotten into. Apparently the film was improvised a lot, and the actress, Michiko Jimenez, does an outstanding job. It’s so believable and painful to watch as she grows more and more passive, lost, and aware of what a huge mistake she’s made getting into this guy’s car.
But what really works about the film is that Shane offers up this sex and violence in such a disturbing way that you’re left questioning your own reasons for being drawn to such a film. At least I was. And on a deeper level, I think it looks at the propensity for violence that’s obviously hard-wired into the human creature.
I’ve long been of the mind that most people are capable of most anything. Obviously to be human is to have the capacity for love, beauty, connection, compassion, AND also the capacity for utter cruelty and degradation. It’s just the human condition and I don’t think any of us are free of those urges, though we can decide what to do with them, at least most of the time. I think under extreme stress people can and do snap and do crazy things that normally they would be able to keep in check. Just reading a newspaper it’s obvious how nasty we can be to one another. And the people doing those nasty things are people just like you and me. We sometimes have a tendency to distance ourselves from certain kinds of people: neo-nazis, child molesters, rapists, killers and so on – and view them as being so beyond the pale that they couldn’t possibly be like us. But I think they are like us. They’re flawed human beings, just as we all are. Perhaps their urges vary in the details (most of us probably aren’t pedophiles or death fetishists), and clearly their self-control is lacking, but the capacity for cruelty and violence lives in us all. And we can get glimpses of it every night when we’re dreaming. The unconscious mind doesn’t know anything about being politically correct or considerate of the well-being of others when it comes to those primal urges.
So I think Shane’s film touches on these kinds of questions and on why so many of us are drawn to darkness. I mean, when I heard the title of this movie and read a couple reviews, I said, “I gotta see that.” Why is that? What does it say about me? Obviously my own sexual fantasies can get pretty dark sometimes. I’m not turned on by death but clearly if you’ve read any of my stories on my website, fear, loss of control, and being in “over one’s head” are indeed sexy to me. And those sexual fantasies obviously plug into a deep primal place way down in the animal side of my brain.
If you want to read some more about APSK, there are quite a few reviews online, and apparently it’ll be coming out on DVD soon. I just want one of those super-cool t-shirts that Shane was wearing at the screening. The poster art is really good, though the suggestion of bondage, I should point out, is a bit of a tease. The actress in the movie never actually gets chained up or cuffed, though the movie’s so nasty that I’m not sure it would have been much of a thrill for me even if she had been.
Anyway, here are a couple more links to check out below. It probably WON’T be coming to a theater near you. But there is the DVD. It’s not an easy watch, but I’d definitely recommend it.