If anyone ever asks me what the definition of a festival film is, I am now equipped to give them a general answer in the form of Spike; a peculiar and decisively amateurish film, one that I think will only appeal to a very select audience.
I don’t think I can give a better outline of the film than the people behind 2008’s Edinburgh International Film Festival have, so I am not even going to try to. Instead I will quote what they have said – Crouch down for spikes, dykes, beasties and obsequies! A backwoods car cruise turns ominous when a lesbian couple, a macho himbo, and ‘The Girl’ are roadraged by the titular monster – all in the name of love, of course. Reclaiming the fairytale for adults, Spike reveals the obsessive beast skulking within the bloom of childhood romance. Goth(ic) horror at its most prickly.
Spike is the kind of film I absolutely thought I’d like. That I really should have liked. I’m the type of film goer that admires the offbeat, applauds the peculiar and welcomes anything that’s different than what we normally see. However there was just something ugly and stiff about this film; it dragged and it was frankly boring a lot of the time. I found that I had to force myself to concentrate because the nonsensical and thus hard to understand plot lost me more times than I can count. I felt that there was a lot of potential in there but they just didn’t seem to go at it as much as they could have.
What appealed to me about the film before I saw it was, apart from that kick-ass synopsis, I got a David Lynch vibe from it. Not that anyone told me this. Not that it was stated to be that way, but just something I got from the images I saw beforehand and the synopsis that felt very ‘Lynchian’ to me. And being the Lynch obsessed fan that I am, this was obviously very appealing to me. A lot of the time it did feel like it was trying to be like his films. But rather than a successful homage, and again this may be unfair because it may never have been the intention in the first place, it comes off as a bad impersonation. The whole thing felt like a gruesome fairytale told badly.
Article comments
1 - Mr Stan
I could not agree more, but I would have to be a bit harsher with my words. Spike should have been an amazing film, the outline written by EIFF staff made it impossible to resist. But this was the first mistake, the outline no resemblance to the film that I saw on Friday evening. The use of the words ominous, obsessive, skulking all added up to what I though (or what should have been) an eerie and creepy experience. The creepiest part of the film was watching the woefully untalented cast chew up the clunky laughable script. There was no tension at all and very little about this film said gothic horror to me (apart from the overuse of images of roses). Was I supposed to like the character of Spike? Was I supposed to hate him or was the goal that he just bore me with his sappy, hammy one liners? This felt like a student movie at it's worst and although I think that the 'under the radar' section in the EIFF is a brilliant addition to an already fantastic festival, they made a very bad mistake to include such an awaful piece of cinema. One last point, anyone who saw the film on Friday can you please explain to be the bizarre dream sequence in the car at the beginning - was I supposed to think that the lesbian lady wanted to have sex with her brother whilst covered in giant spider webs? Or did I hallucinate something interesting during my hour and a half of boredom.
2 - Ross Miller
Well as I said in my review I actually liked the part at the beginning (with the dream sequence etc) as it resembled my kind of movie - weird and surreal. I really don't know what it was supposed to mean, I guess it adds to the list of negative aspects of the movie.
I really didn't like the character of Spike, the opposite of what was most likely intended. I think they were going for the whole elephant man thing in that we are supposed to feel sorry for him because he feels isolated from the rest of society because of the way people treat him based on his looks. But the filmmakers really didn't make us feel anything for the character let alone feel sorry for or like him.