MIFF Session #5: BLACKOUT

Charley is a mess. Pushing 40, he's dealing with the collapse of his marriage through alcoholism, the loss of his job through those two things. And even the paintings he does as though he once considered a career in it are changing character, going from some pretty nifty landscapes and scenes from the country town where he lives to portraits of the maimed, terrified and screaming. Also, Charley is a werewolf. Before you cry spoiler, it's pretty much the first thing we find out about him which is more than he's found out himself. By day, he's active in opposing a development run by the business guy who owns the town and runs everyone in it whose looking for an excuse to run the Mexicans he'd hired for his development out of town now that the big project is under scrutiny. Charley's dad had doings with the dollar man which is one of the reasons why Charley can't quite mourn him. Oh, those murders you see at the beginning weren't the only ones to have happened, nor will they be the last.

Yes, that's a lot of plot to dump in the introductory paragraph but it brings to the fore the strength and weakness of this film. Once you've settled into the, "oh, he's got a conscience and a superpower he doesn't even know about" you begin to understand the sadness of the undercurrent of this story in that it is a description of a destructive alcoholic whose blackouts trouble him like the worst attacks of conscience. The strength is that it's a banger of an idea for a film and all you'll need is a steady hand to keep the two influencing forces playing nice with each other. The weakness is that that doesn't happen. 

This puts the film into a strange margin. The horror action sequences are convincing, the kills and suspense are muscular and white knuckle. The rest of it is a near mumble-core ramble of attempted reconciliations, bro-ey hangouts and old fashioned big man vs small man politics. None of that is poorly done, it's just that the two things never quite mesh. By the climactic scenes the movie gets so near but yet so far from where it needs to be. Similar outings like The Wolf of Snow Hollow played a familiar game between horror and comedy but Blackout, while it shows both wit and a little relieving levity, has a much more sombre story on its mind about the world's Charleys and their localised juggernaut moves.

As to the casting, I noticed something about the chin and mouth of the actor playing Charley. When he grinned he looked like a young Dustin Hoffmann, but there was a kind of heaviness to the mouth and its movement. Not long after I clicked there was a sequence in which photos from the actor's life were used as photos from the character's. The end credits confirmed it: Alex Hurt.

I enjoyed this one but kept feeling it could have gone for more.  

... And "I know what Alex would say..."