Dir: Kevin Smith

Starring: Justin Long, Michael Parks, Haley Joel Osment

1h 42min. Cert 15

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I’ve always liked Kevin Smith films. I would even go so far as to say I’m a fan. I loved Dogma and Clerks, and rom-coms like Chasing Amy were entertaining too. Yet recently in the world of film critics, Kevin Smith hasn’t been doing too well. Tusk did not break that trend.

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In Tusk Justin Long plays a podcaster who, when chasing a story, ends up in Canada at the stately home of an odd wheelchair-bound man, who has a wealth of interesting stories from his past to share. He also happens to be a serial killer who de-limbs people and turns them into walruses. But I’m sure I don’t need to say any more; it’s a classic tale that we all know well.

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And in the past ten years it feels like there’s been a revival of body horror, with films like Human Centipede doing inexplicably well. Tusk sort of fits the criteria. Except it’s not scary. At all. And I’m not doing a macho ‘nothing scares me’ thing here, because I will shit all in my pants at horror films on a regular basis. It’s just that Tusk is more unsettling, bordering on hilarious.

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And it’s a very different beast from my previous Shit Film Sundays. Because it’s made by an experienced director and with decent actors, so the normal shittyness I’ve come to expect wasn’t there. Almost all of Tusk‘s awfulness comes from its bizarre story. So expect major spoilers as I try to understand whether this film is actually shit or not.

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First spoiler; it is shit. I think. But strangely, I’m gonna start with some positives. The main one being that I actually laughed quite a lot throughout. I’m not sure if I was meant to be laughing at all of the times that I was, but I’ll give Smith the benefit of the doubt. Also, Justin Long’s performance was pretty damn good, at least up until he got stuffed into the giant walrus skin suit. And the dinner table scene with Long and Michael Park’s serial killer is great.

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But the story. Jesus christ what a mess. Justin Long’s character is a complete dickhead, we’re made to dislike him immediately. Then as he’s having his limbs chopped off we’re shown flashbacks which make us hate him even more. It makes his transformation into a walrus less horrifying as we have no sympathy for his character. It’s probably why I found it so funny. Maybe that’s what Smith was going for.

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Justin Long’s character Wallace originally goes to Canada in search of a boy who accidentally chopped his own leg off with a samurai sword. Wallace mocked the boy on his podcast, and when he gets to Canada the boy has killed himself, presumably due to all the public mocking he received. So when Wallace ends up at this strange old man’s house and has one of his legs chopped off, I presumed the old man was a relative of the boys and we were in for a good ol’ revenge horror.

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But I couldn’t have been more wrong. I should have guessed that the serial killer wanted to turn him into a walrus. In one of the most bizarre lines in modern cinema we are asked,”Is man, indeed, a walrus at heart?”. And I guess it was only a matter of time. We all knew that sooner or later the question had to be answered. I guess they go some way as to explaining why the serial killer does the things he does; he was abused as a child and was later stranded at sea with a walrus blah blah blah. And even with the explanation it’s still extremely unbelievable.

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But still not as unbelievable as the size of Haley Joel Osment’s head. It’s like all of his facial features stayed the same size as when he was twelve, while his head grew and grew. There’s a picture below to illustrate what I mean. He was the boy from Sixth Sense and A.I. if you don’t know your child actors. It’s easy to see that all of his success as a child actor went straight to his head.

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He is in this film by the way. He plays the co-host of the podcast, who head’s to Canada to find Justin Long. And it’s here that he runs into Johnny Depp’s weird homicide detective from Quebec, who has been hunting this serial killer for a while. For some reason they put a load of prosthetics on Depp’s face. Not to make him look more like a real person. Just because. They probably had a bit of extra rubber lying around from the walrus suit.

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Which leads me to the special effects, which were hilarious. The walrus suit is a ridiculous patch work of sewn together skin of all different shades, some bits even have random ears sticking out. I’m sure it took a long time to make, but it looks cheap. And it makes no sense. Long’s legs are cut off and his arms partly sewed to his chest, plus he’s a skinny dude. What are we meant to believe that the giant Walrus suit is filled with?*

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Lastly, the ending is terrible. Justin Long’s character kills the serial killer with his tusks just as he is found by the others searching for him. I was expecting an online video of him as a walrus to be mocked by another podcast, sort of completing the circle. But they inexplicably decide to leave him in the Walrus suit and let him live out his days eating fish next to a pool. As if sewing someones arms to their chest is completely irreversible.

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Tusk is pretty bad in a lot of senses, but against my better judgement I kind of enjoyed it. The first bit of the film is actually quite good before it descends into Walrus madness. The story is completely unbelievable and the prosthetics look stupid. I don’t know if I’d watch it again, but there was definitely something there. A small glint of gold in a steaming pile of walrus shit.

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RATING:

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BONUS NUGGET: Kevin Smith couldn’t resist sticking in a bunch of cameos. His wife is a diner waitress, and both Depp’s and Smith’s daughters play store clerks. Tusk is also the first of three films in an upcoming trilogy from Smith, the next being Yoga Hosers followed by Moose Jaws. So there’s plenty more ridiculousness to come.

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*Long was actually lying on an exercise ball. But I’m pretty sure I didn’t see that in the serial killer’s walrus suit sketches.