Head Case (2007)
Review by Tony DeFrancisco
A few months ago I saw Amateur Porn Star Killer (review), and for the lack of a harsher word, I hated it. I hated everything about it. I hated the camera angles. I hated the characters. I wished each and every one of them died of a painful death. I wanted each copy of the film to be destroyed so no more human eyes can see it. And since then, I haven’t hated a horror film at all (Yeti: A Love Story [review] does not count, for your info).
Until now.
A little bit of back story behind Head Case. The film and I go a long way – back to the Cadillac ages, perhaps. Anyway, I was supposed to review the film back in November, but someone involved with the production sent the wrong disc (a “rough cut”). So, seven months later, I was surprised to see the “director’s cut” in my mailbox. They must really like me if they go all out for seven months, eh? Yeah, I’m sure I won’t get any love after this review, because Head Case sucks.
The film is supposed to be a “snuff documentary,” looking into the lives of two serial killers and their families. Wayne and Andrea Montgomery (Paul McCloskey and Barbara Lessin) are happily married on the outside, with two kids (Bruce De Santis and Emily Spiegel) that are not aware that their parents are cold-blooded killers. Their M.O…they don’t have an M.O. They decide to kill whenever they see fit to kill someone. I’m still surprised that these dumbasses of serial killers even know how to work a camcorder, let alone know how to kill someone (which kind of explains that half of the deaths are by feeding their victims laundry detergent behind their backs).
The best I can give this film is that they don’t cheat us with the video angles. Being shot on a camcorder, Head Case should have been one of the shakiest of shakey-cam movies. The film is based off of “home-video footage” in chronological order, but we can never be sure if the director tries to mess with us on that observation. It may be in chronological order and may not, but it is up to you to decide. (The director put the film in chronological order, but to make it seem more like real home footage, they probably threw a few scenes where they don’t belong, making some of the film nonlinear.)
Everything else, however, doesn’t catch a break.
At the beginning of the film, we see this family as just like an every-day family. They have their siblings that fight over who is the favorite and the two adults that go on and talk about every day things. In the second half of the film, the family gets torn apart. It is at this time when I find the film completely unbelievable. It isn’t surprising that these filmmakers didn’t know how to end the film, especially when one character abruptly leaves.
The characters are believable for the first twenty minutes, but then when you closely examine them, you find that they are nothing that they should have been. McCloskey looks too much of a turd that isn’t covered in shit and Lessin just comes off as annoying. Their children look more like serial killers than these two do. Maybe the director could have convinced us a little bit more that these guys were killers as opposed to Star Trek geeks.
Head Case is terrible. I wouldn’t go as far to say that it is worse than Amateur Porn Star Killer, because nothing is as bad as that (except for Yeti), but it is definitely something I’d never want to watch again.
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