Review by
Benjamin Poole
Directed by: Michael Lombardi, Bridget Smith, Samuel Gonzalez Jr
Starring: Michael Lombardi, Marc Menchaca, Joseph Gatt, Jacoby Shaddix, Katie Kelly, Abbey
Hafer
My film chums and I have this glibly pejorative phrase which we use as a
shorthand when referring to the sort of landfill horror systematically
churned out as content for streaming services: a ‘Shudder Film’. While
this isn’t entirely fair to the specified platform (with its often superb
original movies and creatively curated heritage selections), the cap sort
of fits. A Shudder Film is that movie which is lazy, a paint by numbers
horror whose ambitions extend no further than inhabiting genre frameworks
and going straight to a digital service where it will be dutifully
consumed by horror audiences, the most greedy and habituated of all
audiences. You know, the sort of film that people who went to FrightFest
rave about in the moment, but which seems, well, a bit ordinary when the
rest of us get to watch it months later, as it unceremoniously surfaces on
Prime or whatever. Recent exploitation effort
The Retaliators (directors:
Samuel Gonzalez Jr., Bridget Smith, Michael Lombardi; screenplay:
Darren Geare, Jeff Allen Geare - perhaps more films should apply
group efforts) did actually debut at FrightFest as it happens, and I
wouldn’t be surprised if it ends up on Shudder, either. However, allow the
pedigree, as a ‘Shudder Film’ The Retaliators ain’t.
Not that you’d guess from the opening sequence, which, and stop me if
you’ve heard this one before, depicts a couple of young women in a van
getting lost in some backwoods, to be eventually terrorised by what appear
to be zombies, while a nu-metal soundtrack anachronistically throws a
tantrum on the soundtrack. If you caught this on a streaming channel, the
trite typicality of the opening would be enough to make you opt out and
continue scrolling for something better. But that scroll would be in vain.
Because, despite the basic tenements of its opening salvo,
The Retaliators turns out to be a genre joy, an absolutely
mental cornucopia of violence, gore and sentimentality which is so
authentically kitschy that it hits you both in the heart and the gut.
Part of The Retaliators’ consistent charm is created by the mad, unforeseen narrative elements
it nonchalantly delivers. The so-so nature of the opening may well be a
double bluff, part of the shifting, mercurial nature of this complete
one-off (those zombies? You will never ever guess what they actually are).
Accordingly, in the next scene we flash back to a small c conservative
American town where dad John Bishop (Michael Lombardi - rumpled Freddie
Prinze, Jr) is a pastor and dad to two daughters, a teen and a tween. The
family are in mourning following the death of mum some years earlier. Talk
about a gear change: the lighting here is the flat bright of a sit-com,
the mise-en-scene pure Xmas telly movie, the mood gentle melodrama. We see
the family get into a minor scuffle with Dante from
Clerks when out purchasing a Christmas tree: an awkward
skirmish which Pastor Dad duly incorporates into his evening service later
which everyone in town, young and old (except Dante), seems to turn up
for. The service also has a performance from a nu-metal band (production
company Better Noise Films is an imprint of clues-in-the-name Better Noise
Records music label). They play, the congregation calmly and happily
watch, and then the Pastor carries on with a quip about turning up
tomorrow with blue hair as if an aggressive rock combo playing a church
service is completely normal. Watching in a state of artificially induced
relaxation, I laughed so much I almost spilled my wine!
And I laughed over and over again throughout The Retaliators. But, crucially, never at the film (well, not much - although for
British audiences a vengeful pastor warrior being called John Bishop is
accidentally hilarious). How could anyone make fun of a film this sincere,
this devoted to entertaining and surprising its audience? The first major
shock is an especially cruel death of somebody we’ve been positioned to
accept as a major character, to whom the film has ascribed goals and
established potential for development (although this killing is,
admittedly, ruined by the marketing). The death especially hurts because,
zombie opening notwithstanding, until then
The Retaliators has just felt so warm and, well, lovely.
Talk about being lulled into false security (genuinely, at one point
watching the screener at home, such was the genial sugary tone of the film
that I wondered if one of the cats had pawed the remote control when I was
unbeknownst topping up my Pinot Noir, happening upon an entirely unrelated
movie).
All bets are off from then on in. Within 20 minutes of
The Retaliators the audience has been presented with three
distinct genres (zombie mental, Hallmark channel, hardboiled noir):
something for everyone. And the energy doesn’t let up - the momentum of
the film, and its aspiration, is laudable enough. How it’s pulled off is a
pure pleasure, because, in The Retaliators nothing pans out
as you may expect. After the shocking denouement of the first act, Pastor
Dad, following a period of delicately and effectively portrayed grief,
makes like King Solomon and fixes to deliver a brand of personal
vengeance. Or, again, does he? Look, The Retaliators is no
theological treatise, but the transition Pastor Dad makes is never
straightforward, complicated as it is by his religious beliefs and
entrenched in interesting character work (and the film did movingly remind
me of the strength some people are able to draw from their faith), all of
which gives The Retaliators’ revenge trajectory a twist more interesting than the usual binary
pattern. Likewise, the recurring images of men, both goodies and baddies,
in confined spaces smashing their fists in useless aggression against
their surroundings (a car interior, a phone booth), is an intriguing
leitmotif of frustrated masculinity, which is in turn consolidated by the
implied impotent rage of its goatee metal rap soundtrack (it’s probably no
spoiler to say that the victims in the film are women, and the titular
acts of retaliation are catalysed by male principles of honour and duty).
As we go on, the film builds to a climax which is extremely gory, with
joyfully sustained bodily trauma as callously mad as it is cathartic (and
in terms of storytelling the deliberately bad taste of which efficiently
juxtaposes the genteel Bedford Fallisms of the opening). If the entire
film had essentially been the last act stretched, with its proficient
genre thrills, then frankly, that would have been enough: enough for the
increasingly low expectations of us as fans, and for the limited
parameters of the ‘Shudder Film’. But The Retaliators never
once rests on its laurels, not in terms of its innovative narrative, or
its unconditional focus on both compelling and startling whoever is
fortunate enough to be watching it. Is The Retaliators the
best film of the year? Don’t be silly. It’s probably not the best film
this week. Yes, tedious pricks may point out the sporadically ropey
acting, the sheer unlikelihood of what unfolds, and so on: bore off. As,
for genre connoisseurs, the inventive hyperbole of
The Retaliators could well make it the one of the most
comforting and enjoyable films not just for this week or for this year,
but for the ages.
The Retaliators is in cinemas worldwide from September 14th.
