Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Eric Pennycoff
Starring: Graham Skipper, Jeremy Gardner, Taylor Zaudtke, Rigo
Garay
If you've ever found yourself lumbered with a guest overstaying their
welcome you may sympathise with the protagonist of writer/director
Eric Pennycoff's The Leech. That said, Father David, the Catholic priest played by
Graham Skipper, is ultimately so unlikable that you'll struggle
to care about the rod he makes for his back through a backfiring act of
charity.
In the week before Christmas, Father David delivers an impassioned
sermon to a congregation whose numbers you could count on the fingers of
one hand. While locking up the church he discovers Terry (Jeremy Gardner) sleeping in one of the pews. Terry claims his girlfriend hasn't
showed up and he'll have to spend the night sleeping under a bridge. In
an act of Christian goodwill, David takes Terry back to his house for
the night and endures an evening of loud heavy metal music, coarse
language and drinking from his house guest. But it's only for one night,
right?
The next day David hears confession from a young woman who has become
pregnant and is considering an abortion, an idea David does his best to
dispel from her head. Returning home he finds not only Terry still on
his property, but joined by his girlfriend Lexi (Taylor Zaudtke,
Gardner's real-life wife). When David hears Lexi speak he puts two and
two together and assumes that she's the young woman whose desperate
confession he earlier heard (whether two plus two really equals four in
this case is left ambiguous). In an attempt to save the unborn, David
insists on Terry and Lexi staying under his roof, as long as they abide
by their rules.
What ensues is a psychological and theological game of cat and mouse
between the devout David and the hedonistic Terry. Both men try to
induct the other into their way of life, and Terry seems to get the
upper hand, even getting David drunk and roping him into doing the sort
of things no man of the cloth should be involved in. In this way
The Leech is reminiscent of those '90s thrillers like
Pacific Heights and Bad Influence, where an unwitting protagonist finds themselves saddled with the
unwanted company of a sociopath. The difference here is that the
scenario is played for laughs – think a foul-mouthed, horror tinged
reworking of What About Bob? – but the generation of those
laughs is too often reliant on crude shortcuts like gay panic gags and
digs at the easy target of the religious.
All three central characters are obnoxious in their own ways, Terry and
Lexi with their overbearing crudeness, David with his pompous piousness,
but none of them are particularly interesting or unique, despite being
well played by the three actors. This makes for a movie that begins to
grate by the time it takes an unexpected psychedelic turn in the final
act. This shift is somewhat jarring, as Pennycoff hasn't laid enough
groundwork to pull off such a detour. Imagine a relatively straight
albeit sleazy comedy with a 2001: A Space Odyssey light
show tacked onto the end and you'll have some idea of what you're in
for. The Leech is probably best experienced with a late
night, liquored up festival crowd that can connect to its boozy
wavelength. Watching it in my living room I found that like its
antagonists, it ultimately overstayed its welcome.
The Leech is on Arrow from
December 5th.
