Chaos

by | Dec 28, 2014 | The Horror Review News | 0 comments

First things first, obviously by my rating, the reader is aware of which side of David DeFalco’s Chaos fence I reside. Though I try not to validate a work of art in the wake of criticism–allowing those who condemn to do so upon their own volition as is their right as critics–I will attempt to do double-time as I address why one might, at first, view certain aspects of the film condemnable as I proceed to attempt to justify the film citing how, in many cases, said critics merely issued a cursory glance at the work and denounced it, not on aesthetic principles, but rather via the always shifty nature of subjective moral values, never allowing themselves to step away from the plot elements proper and assess whether or not the work, unlike themselves, moved beyond the explicit acts depicted onscreen.

Emily Collins (Chantal Degroat) convinces her parents, Leo and Esther (Scott Richards and Deborah Lacey respective), to allow her and her friend, Angelica (Maya Barovich), to go to a rave in the woods. Once there, the girls immediately attempt to score ecstasy from a guy named Swan (Sage Stallone). However, for them to get the drugs, they must follow him back to a nearby, isolated cabin. Once there, Chaos (Kevin Gage), Daisy (Kelly Quann), and Frankie (Stephen Wozniak) proceed to rape and murder the girls. However, amid the mayhem, the killers find themselves at the Collins’ home to be confronted by their victim’s parents.

Many have cited that Chaos is a plagiarized version of Wes Craven’s The Last House on the Left. Aside from the fact that several scenes have been removed, rewritten, and extended or shortened, thus qualifying Chaos for the now popular label of “reimagined” as is the phrase for many liberal remakes of today, it is interesting in that many of those same critics issued high marks alongside very flattering comments of Craven’s film atop the fact that they openly recognized the work as being a rehashing of Ingmar Bergman’s The Virgin Spring, which came a scant twelve years before. (Bergman’s film is based upon a 13th century Swedish ballad thus, from a Jungian perspective, such a narrative could easily be argued as sustaining its own archetype, thereby validating its relevance and accounting for its perpetual interest.) To justify their accolades, they state that Craven’s film represents the unspoken sentiment of the Vietnam Era (even though Craven himself openly admits that the film was exploitive). However, though more time has lapsed between Defalco and Craven’s productions, alongside the fact that 9/11 has arguably prompted more outrage and discontent from all factions of society then Vietnam, such critics have nonetheless upheld Craven’s work due to what I cannot help but assert is the director’s steadfast catalogue, which Defalco obviously, one feature-length film into his career (Chaos clocks in at a brief seventy-four minutes), does not have as argumentative support. Why have I yet to read that a supposed effigy of a film uttering the silent discontent of the masses over thirty years prior is a sign of how little times have changed? Of course, after all of this, I suppose it would be a moot point to mention that very few whispered even the slightest serious complaint about The Virgin Spring, the work of a noted master.

Having seen my fair share of gratuitous horror films in which the director merely hid behind the veil of art in order to indulge his or her own sadistic, hedonistic perversions and immoral fantasies, I recognized a staunch difference between such productions and DeFalco’s work, that is, that the latter exhibits a very professional and, in some cases borderline masterful, control (especially in relation to Craven’s film) which is almost always absent from works which fall into the former category. Case in point, with many throwaway grindhouse productions, the pace of the narrative is broken as the director stops to focus upon the gore and violence. Conversely, in Chaos, the pacing is consistent and steady throughout, giving the viewer the impression that the film was made with an express purpose as opposed to being an exercise in cinematic excess. Furthermore, unlike many readily dismissible works of explicit gore, the camera only remains on one single act of carnage (which is justifiable in that if it were permitted to shy away during this period, when we return, we would be unable to determine what had occurred). In all other instances (barring the standardized gunshot and subsequent wound), the camera turns or a figure blocks our sightline to the ensuing wound. Obviously, a director with a preoccupation with grotesquery would not only focus on such acts, but extend them for as long as possible. Moreover, in Craven’s film, a very gruesome fellatio scene takes place between the mother’s victim, Estelle, and the gang’s second in command, Weasel. This sequence is rewritten and subsequently downplayed in Chaos, DeFalco opting for the vastly more plausible exchange to take place between Angelica and Frankie. Obviously, any self-respecting gorehound would place express interest in Craven’s rendition due to the generational taboo of mother/criminal as opposed to the more subtle victim/criminal scenario. Also of note is the now conspicuous presence of such narrative-weighty motifs of the killer’s background, parental ethics, and racism seen during the film (the latter of which does not appear in The Last House on the Left), which a true cinematic apostate would discharge as mere elitist ideas which otherwise detract from the “real” action.

In a similar vein, some critics have scoffed at the film’s prologue which posits Chaos as a cautionary tale, stating it is a mere ruse by filmmakers who couldn’t care less about the safety and security of their audience and are merely exploiting the medium for notoriety, if not for their own depraved, hedonistic purposes. Beginning with Aristophanes’s Lysistrata, adding Giovanni Boccaccio’s The Decameron, and moving onto Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders and ending with Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange–all of which have come under similar criticism of decadence in the name of depicting what might occur if we permit ourselves to ethically waver–I find such critics’ dismissals as valid as those who walked out of Kubrick’s film after the first ten minutes.

Another aspect of the work which got my cognitive gears turning–not only to the idea that this was not your typical self-indulgent foray into a director’s unabashed sadomasochism–but in general, was the figure of Chaos, the leader of the gang. One critic cited him as being the stereotypical psychotic redneck. However, I paused once the character did likewise after his son, Swan, had been mortally wounded. A typecast hick in this regard would continue on, diligently sallying forth as his apathetic animalistic drives and impulses lead the way. However, Chaos not only stops and ponders upon the dilemma, thus permitting his hostage to flee and possibly reach civilization (thereby putting himself at risk considering he’s already wanted by the police for previous crimes), he then decides to put his son out of his misery–hardly the actions of stereotypical insanity-driven cinematic mayhem. (This character-heavy scene is also new to the Craven storyline as the Chaos figure in his film, Krug, is not only not faced with such a predicament, but forces his son, Junior, to commit suicide, thus complicating the ease at which critics can argue for the depravity of DeFaclo’s script in relation to his predecessor.) Intriguing still further is how Chaos allots Frankie and Daisy their own time with the victims instead of merely verbally berating his companions as many a cinematic Alpha male has done to keep others wanting in on one’s good time at a safe distance. During a period when serial killers are cast in the extreme as either high-brow (Hannibal Lecter) or low-brow (Mickey and Mickey Knox), DeFalco issues us a more plausible, naturalistic, and somewhat humane, caricature of a killer. What’s more is that the impetus for Chaos’s bloodthirsty drive is never made explicitly clear as he first immobilizes his victims prior to considering whether to rape or kill his prey (we watch him rob the corpses but this is issued as a mere means-to-an-end). Rather than being the fault of DeFalco’s script, this ambiguity poses a remarkable idea: Perhaps such drives are not clear cut. Perhaps a mind which could commit such acts, which society deems as insane, are just that–not host to clearly drawn lines of logistical demarcation, even to the murderer.

Some have commented that there exists little redemption or hope by the film’s stunning climax as the Daily Herald cites the work as being one of the first truly post-9/11 visions set to celluloid. As anyone who has moved from adolescent idealism to real-world pragmatism is aware, sometimes things don’t turn out for the best, sometimes the Coriolanuses of the world are right, sometimes life is the proverbial bitch it is said to be. Luck plays a huge role in everyday affairs and sometimes the dice roll right for the wrong people. The happenstance nature of existence is just that and is oftentimes a far cry from being a succinctly written Disney film working under the Breen Production Code. DeFalco’s film brings this hard-learned fact to the forefront with stunning, unrepentant honesty and clarity. Granted, many focus upon the ending for this reason because it was the most obvious and significant deviation from Craven’s film. Paradoxically, we applauded George Romero when he updated his own masterpiece, Night of the Living Dead, as he recast his tale to reflect how society has changed over the course of a little over twenty years. Why can’t we do the same for DeFalco? If I had to guess, I would conjecture that it is because, more than anything, Romero opted for a happy ending the second go-around (atop his stature as a master, see below).

One of the first things that we learn in Cinema 101–as I cited at the beginning of this review, which many critics tossed by the wayside–is critical objectivity. I cannot help but believe that many refused to aptly separate themselves from the subject matter (indeed, the make-up and special effects makes one consider the possibility that you are watching a snuff film), which they deemed reprehensible, and thus permitted their subjective distain to taint their viewing of the film proper. In the epistolary exchange between Roger Ebert and the filmmakers, the latter retorts to the impenitent nature of the crimes onscreen as equivalent in weight to the death of Natalie Holloway, the beheadings in Iraq, and the gut-churning confessions of the BTK killer. What this implies is that we demand that cinema teach us something but never too much in that it is forbidden to give us too much reality. This implicitly states that we can take the nihilism, pain, and suffering on the evening news each and every night but, God forbid, we show the world as it is on the big screen. This begs filmmakers to let us escape our humdrum existences into a fabricated, exaggerated, cushy, sanitized (filmmaker’s word) world of blatant simulacra. This becomes ironic, if not paradoxical, when placed alongside Craven’s own justification for making The Last House on the Left, “These things exist and art is about things that exist.”

Lastly, and reverting back to Ebert as my example, is the figure of the director. Again, anyone who has taken an introductory course in the arts knows to separate the artist from the work. However, the Pulitzer prize-winning critic seems to have fallen hook, line, and sinker for DeFalco (which, in traditional Ebertian fashion, begs a Freudian reading) whom, it is commonly known, was a former professional wrestler. Granted, we have come to accept and, in many respects, expect a director of a serious work of art to be cool, calm, and collected because capricious style unnecessarily detracts from one’s thoughts upon art, but there is no law that states such individuals must conform to said notions, especially in a realm in which originality is upheld as one of the most admirable traits which can possibly be exhibited (on that note, have we ever had a professional wrestler-cum-director of any renown?). As such, we write off Woody Allen marrying his adopted daughter and Charlie Chaplin his cousin, we overlook Jerzy Kosinski’s transvestitism, we readily dismiss Immanuel Kant’s refusal to perspire, we ignore Jackson Pollock and William Faulkner’s public urinations. Why? Because of their acknowledged . . . er, established, brilliance. These are merely eccentricities of character which pale in comparison to the individuals’ awe-inspiring genius and gifts which they have given the world. This said, perhaps it worked, that is, I cannot help but think that the exaggerated nature of DeFalco’s public persona is just that, all too reminiscent of Kevin Smith’s double-sided character of Hooper X in Chasing Amy. Even if we concur with the possibility that the film’s producer, Steven Jay Bernheim, is cast suspiciously alongside the director at speaking engagements, this is nonetheless arbitrary to the work itself. Heck, let’s go one better, throwing caution to the wind and, for argument’s sake, say the work just happened to fall into place with no omnipotent hand at the helm. Do we not still advocate and herald Michael Curtiz’s Casablanca even though it was written day-by-day as the film was being shot?

Equally interesting is Ebert’s retort to the filmmakers’ misquotation of the Chicago critic as having referred to the work as “shit”: “I find it ironic that the makers of Chaos would scold me for using ‘coarse’ language and ‘resorting to expletives’.” Once again, Ebert failed to separate the work from the artist and assumes that one would be overtly representative of the other. If this is true, what does this say of Alfred Hitchcock, Oliver Stone, Stanley Kubrick, Quentin Tarantino, and Francis Ford Coppola? Of course, in light of the preceding paragraph, this is only a hop, skip, and jump away from Ebert positing the implicit non sequitur that the director’s personal originality wouldn’t remark and be evidence of such in his film.

David DeFalco’s Chaos is in league with such films as John McNaughton’s Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers, Rob Zombie’s The Devil’s Rejects, Gaspar Noé’s Irréversible, Pier Pasolini’s Salò, Wes Craven’s The Last House on the Left, Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, Meir Zarchi’s Day of the Woman (a.k.a. I Spit on Your Grave). Granted, some hit while others obviously miss, but if one approaches any of these works with a passing glance without issuing them the due thought that one would offer works not housing acts of extreme violence, the person will never be able to move past the initial trees of the metaphorical forest to see the wonder and mystery that awaits inside. (What of the critics who don’t approve of cats? Are they thereby justified in issuing lower marks to works which house felines?) Yes, a forest can seem daunting and even threatening upon first glance, but only after one offers him or herself to the chasm of nature is one able to access and grow from the wonders contained within (heck, a few scrapes and bruises might come along the way). Regardless, if you walk out of the woods unimpressed, you cannot legitimately complain if you merely drove by and veered at the thought of entering. This folks, is what every film deserves and, unfortunately, some–such as Chaos–are denied.

-Egregious Gurnow

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