Tusk (2014), R, ★

Justin Long and Michael Parks having a discussion.

It's extremely difficult to make a very satisfying horror film that has a balance between gross-out substances and idyllic humor. The only film I can think of that can make me laugh out loud in this genre is the Mel Brooks-directed Young Frankenstein. A film that can almost make me literally roll on the floor laughing. But, this movie is overly ambitious of what Kevin Smith, the director, is trying to show us, it ultimately fails a film that does not deliver the scares nor the laughs.

The movie starts off pretty well as podcasters Wallace Bryton and Teddy Craft (Justin Long and Haley Joel Osment) are recording a bit for their show as the laugh over a video of a kid, nicknamed "The Kill Bill Kid", cutting off his own leg accidentally. Wallace makes it to Canada and meets one of the people working at the airport and makes a lame joke about Canada. He travels to the kid's family home and they are upset because the kid committed suicide.

Wallace ventures into an estate called Pippy Hill to Howard Howe's (Michael Parks) home. Howard is paralyzed and moves around in a chair serving tea to Wallace. As Howe tells a story, Wallace gets unconscious. Awakened, Wallace is in a wheelchair strapped and his left leg amputated. Howe's demise is to put him in a walrus costume because of his obsession with walruses. Ally (Genesis Rodriguez) and Teddy is barely contacted by Wallace when he tells them that his human life is over. Uh oh!

Osment and Rodriguez to the rescue.

I like Kevin Smith as a filmmaker when trying to mix gross-out comedy with a hint of drama especially in his early film, Clerks. However, he really missed the boat on this film. Except for the first 10 minutes, this movie is not funny. There is not a single burst of laughter. Also, what's even more shocking, the film is not scary. It's just a gross film with scenes of pointless jokes that really want to show me organs and blood and Hollywood substances that make me cringe. That's the nature of what the horror-dramedy film. You can make it funny without displaying all of that blood.

I was shocked with the content of the film because besides that funny opening, it turns to a dragged one-joke film. It just really embarrasses Justin Long being beaten and tortured. And, even though, I was happen to see Haley Joel Osment on-screen again, I did not know what he was thinking choosing this script. He has better taste than this. This movie is a boring and pretentious film not showing what comedy in a horror film is all about. A stupid film, one of the worst of the year.

*