Yes, that's a 70's Buick Skylark with
dual flame shooting exhaust pipes. No, this isn't the movie you want
it to be.
As one of the most talked about indie
releases of the last year, Bellflower has garnered praise from
critics and buzz from fans as a hyper-stylized, singular cinematic
achievement. At first glance, it certainly stands out from the pack
with art house visuals and a zany non-linear plot that wants to play
out as a bizzaro amalgamation of Mad Max and 500 Days of
Summer. Coupled with first time director/writer/star Evan
Glodell's meager $17,000 budget and insistence on using a one of kind
homemade camera this naturally created a lot of intrigue.
Just try to find a single 18-35 year
old man with an appreciation for Mel Gibson's pre-anti-semetic output
who doesn't get hard reading this Netflix synopsis:
“Two buddies prepare for the impending apocalypse by building a stockpile of high-grade weapons. Fostering dreams of launching a gang called Mother Medusa, the duo's plans are put on hold when they meet a young woman who introduces elements of violence and betrayal into this fraternity of End Times enthusiasts.“
Here's the problem:
All of this makes for great press
release material, but the end product is a self-indulgent clusterfuck
that pisses away all of its potential and draws serious attention to
its numerous flaws. The only real accomplishment here is perfectly
capturing the personalities of vapid LA hipster douchebags by
creating a movie that functions as their film equivalent. Bellflower
is all style and no substance in a desperate attempt to seem cool and
important while simultaneously insisting that it doesn't really
care what you think. A movie
doesn't have to live up to my misguided expectations, but it does
have to avoid being a colossal pile of steaming shit. Evan Glodell
must have missed that memo.
Forget everything you've read.
Bellflower isn't a movie about a Mad Max inspired gang or weapon
stockpiling for an impending apocalypse. The story draws some
influence from 80's post apocalyptic action films, but mostly uses
images and ideas from The Road Warrior as a frame for a male power
fantasy driven anti-love story. Protagonist Woodrow and his buddy
Aiden are LA hipster transplants from the Midwest with an apocalypse
fixation that drives their childlike desire to build a functioning
flamethrower and intimidating death car in order to rule over the
ruined society of the future. Their dreams are thrown into to turmoil
when Woodrow falls in love with the free spirited (i.e. impulsive
sociopath) Milly whose infidelity sets off a chain of events that
leads to a closed head injury complete with violent delusions.
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| A production company created a real flamethrower for Bellflower. No one bothered to write a real script. |
Any potential associated with the story
is squandered the moment the actors start opening their mouths and
speaking. I realize that this is a low budget film, but seriously,
fuck you. Not having a lot of money to throw around should never be
used as a crutch for bad writing (or in this case, almost none) or
actors that are this consistently inept. Sure mumblecore is all the
rage, but if you ask your actors to ad-lib it comes with the
expectation that they've been given proper direction, understand the
character they're playing, and can deliver an authentic performance.
Instead the first time actors of Bellflower are given completely
unlikable characters which they flesh out with repetitive dialogue
that manages to make them even more painful to watch on screen. In
between banal muttering punctuated with enough “yeah” “dude”
and “awesome” to make your fucking head explode, we're treated to
scenes that aim for emotionally intense but mostly land on laughably
bad or sophomoric at best.
Honestly, I doubt Laurence fucking
Olivier could save this dud. I guess if you're an insufferable
self-centered hipster prick, the characters in Bellflower might not
bother you. For the rest of us, everyone in this movie is difficult
to empathize with and easy to hate. Woodrow goes from infantile and
mildly irritating to detached cocksucker while Aiden fluctuates between
mosquito like annoyance and full blown asshole. The women somehow
manage to fare worse. Milly lacks that manic pixie dream girl charm
the story demands and is incredibly off putting. Courtney at least
starts as an attractive block of wood who graduates to Woodrow's
hyper dependent cum dumpster by the film's end. As far as I can tell,
everyone in Bellflower exists in a filthy ironic beard wonderland
where they're paid an exorbitant salary to fuck like animals and
drink malt liquor. Sure you don't need likable characters to tell a
good story, but you do need well written ones. Bellflower has
neither.
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| Note the built in boombox in the back seat of Woodrow's kitschy irony-mobile |
And what about that custom camera and
all that talk of the director's unique cinematic vision? Maybe that's
the silver lining. If you're a camera geek you might appreciate some
subtle touches here and there, but the audience is rarely served up
any sort of visual flare they haven't been exposed to before. Most of
the stylized scenes reek of Tony Scott Domino worship and the
other little tricks aren't anything beyond what can be done with a
base knowledge of modern effects and editing techniques.
Ultimately Bellflower shows some
promise early but fails to bring anything particularly interesting to
the table. With a plodding second act, poor acting, one note
obnoxious characters, and a relentless atmosphere of grating
smugness, there isn't much to recommend here. Maybe if you live in
the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles and have a rare form of
autism which causes you to watch Slacker on a loop while
furiously masturbating to muscle car magazines you'll get something
out of it. The rest of the world can pass on this one.
