Woah woah woah… SPOILER ALERT! Then again with a film as bloodbath assured, cine-literate and reverentially paying homage to its 80’s American Slasher roots as NO ONE LIVES, the title is actually tacit: a given, a promise and a warning. Maybe instead it should be called ‘NO ONE LIVES… OBVS’.
The amiable all-out psychopath is as ingrained in American Culture as liberty, fried chicken & bad healthcare; from Norman Bates to Patrick Bateman, Michael Myers to Michael Moore (sorry, couldn’t resist, though he isn’t exactly amiable), the nation- and especially it’s film industry- loves a good serial killer. Now as the nation reeled from 9/11, the good old American psychopath just wasn’t scary anymore. Horror’s villains took a more global and nuclear face [RESIDENT EVIL(s), THE WALKING DEAD, THE CRAZIES] or familiar and familial [THE STRANGERS, THE PURGE, YOU’RE NEXT]. However, we horror fans crave what we crave, and amiable psychopaths share more with fried chicken than just cultural imbedding: they’re also mighty delicious. The ‘America’s Favourite Psychopaths’ Gallery may just be ready for a new psychopath to idolise.
In a stunningly original set up we follow a handsome and pretty 30-something boyfriend and girlfriend roadtripping through the American backwoods who hole up at some spit and sawdust bar only to have a decidedly unpleasant run in with the criminal hick locals and end up shackled & bound in a dingy factory. Oh yeah, by the way the boyfriend happens to be a skilled serial killing psychopath with a girl tied up in his trunk. Plot twist. Oops.
Director Ryuhei Kitamura is well adept at twisted stories and what follows is a cat-and-mouse fight for survival between villain and villains, littered with subtly- and smartly- hinted at twists and revelations, one-liners that make you want to fist pump the air and a cornucopia of demented set pieces, it’s some of the most fun you will have with a film this year.
To elaborate on the set pieces would be detriment to their surprise, and surprise they do. Every other death will have you recoiling from the screen or whooping and hollering along with the synth pulsing soundtrack. One particular incident that puts a whole new spin on the term ‘body bag’ defies the audience to not have their jaws on the floor, and sure would make one hell of a Halloween costume. Then there is an actual body bag. Or rather a bag filled to the seams with body parts that is a brilliant homage to FRIDAY THE 13TH. Not to mention possibly the best throat slit since LAWLESS. The practical effects work by Robert Hall’s always impeccable team Almost Human are resoundedly top notch and appropriately icky, often stealing the show and blending seamlessly with the action choreography.
These set pieces don’t just come quick and fast, they effectively make up the entire run time. Every scene has its standout moment of batshit craziness, be it a self tracheotomy or a daughter-stepmother catfight. All of this makes the runtime haste along quicker than a 40oz beer turns to pee.
At the centre of all this, our good old charismatic all-American psycho known simply as The Driver (a brilliant, scenery chewing Luke Evans) is an endlessly creative mercenary of madness whose skill with a weapon is only trumped by his skill with one liners. Evan’s Driver is franchise worthy as far as characters go and I wouldn’t be surprised if this isn’t the last we see of him. Endlessly quotable, NO ONE LIVES’ dialogue veers from kick ass: “He’s dead” “You don’t know my brother… “ “and I never will” to the wonderfully campy “if I wanted to talk to an asshole I would’ve torn you a new one”. The pièce-de-résistance dialogue speaking, of course being the actual reading of the title, once again sure to elicit many a punching of the air.
It is this that is most refreshing about NO ONE LIVES, in that it never takes itself fully seriously- some of the acting is almost seemingly deliberately bad, it throws down hammy lines quicker than Adam Sandler’s latest shit salad of a film, and seems perfectly adept at a few goofy fight scenes. Kitamura seems to know exactly what he wants to do with the film, narratively and tonally, and to the right audience (AKA me), the film is a resoundingly rowdy success, guilty pleasure horror at it’s very finest. Stylistically too, Kitamura domineers, shooting in grain filled Super 16MM, the picture echoes the aesthetic of the 80s slashers it’s standing alongside (read: not simply paying homage). And it’s that cinematic grain that makes NO ONE LIVES feel all the more American cult classic, blood has rarely looked this grittily good on screen in 30 years.
America’s Favourite Psychopaths Gallery is set to open a new exhibit, and it’s called NO ONE LIVES. I’d recommend you don’t wear white.
9 human suits / 10 synthesiser hero-themes
And that’s my two cents.
MyTwoCentsFilm 