Tusk (2014) Review by Cole Albinder the Horror Comedy Tusk, Written

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Tusk (2014) Review By Cole Albinder The horror comedy Tusk, written and directed by Kevin Smith (the Clerks films), stars Justin Long (Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story) as Wallace Bryton, the arrogant co-host of a popular podcast called The Not-See Party (as in “not see”, not “Nazi”) wherein he and co-host Teddy Craft (The Sixth Sense’s Haley Joel Osment) interview and later poke fun at interesting or bizarre people from viral videos online. Wallace’s next podcast interview takes him to Canada to meet with Howard Howe (the late character actor Michael Parks), a charming, older paraplegic who has an odd fascination with walruses, after one saved him from dying out at sea as a young man. It soon becomes clear that Howard’s fascination with the walrus is more of a psychotic obsession, one that involves Wallace in a very special way. This leaves it up to Teddy and Wallace’s girlfriend Ally (Genesis Rodriguez) to save him from Howard’s clutches. So this was a weird one; I’ve seen a lot of weird films, but this was a very distinct kind of weird, the kind that some people may or may not like. As for me, I mostly liked it. I think it maybe got too weird at times, like instead of going in one direction, it went in every direction. For me, it’s fun to go insane with an idea, but even insanity should have some focus to it, as weird as that sounds. That was the case for me here. The script is hit-and-miss. I’ve been a fan of Smith’s work for a long time, though I haven’t seen some of his movies in a while, most of which were comedies. I always loved how his jokes were witty while still being crude, how his characters were (mostly) relatable even when doing or saying something crazy. The humor and characters here? Not quite as much. It mostly comes across as crude without being nuanced or clever. Long’s protagonist in particular is obnoxious and demeaning whenever he’s on- screen. Both Smith and Long want him to be the wiseass who rubs off on you like other characters Smith’s written much better in the past, but that barely comes across here, even as Long tries his darndest. Other characters, like Osment’s Teddy and Rodriguez’s Ally, don’t get the development they need to register as real people; they start out interesting with their motivations, but these directions go by the wayside by the time the finale arrives. The horror side of things works pretty well, but its tense and disturbing atmosphere (I was disturbed at a few points) clashes with the comedy rather than mixes with it. What doesn’t always help is how the horror is a little over-the-top, but it’s not always supposed to be funny. Parks, a veteran of several Quentin Tarantino films, is scary good as Howe, getting some good moments that flesh out his character beyond psychotic weirdo. It’s a shame he’s the only one that gets those moments. An interesting if bizarre story that suffers from an unlikable lead, poor pacing, and an incorrect mixing of genres, Tusk could have been better, and has some moments of suspense and surrealness, but not many. I’ll give it a 3.5/5. .

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