Natural Selection

When I first finished Natural Selection, or Monster Hunter, I didn't know what to think. The movie comes at you like a breeze, quick and without much of an impression.

The movie itself was not that interesting. A plot about serial killers and a couple of jokes.

What really bothered me was its side-plot, the one that involves David Carridine. I can't tell you much about it, but it's "interesting" The movie obviously had some vision, which I liked. It tried something new. But it just fell short. Way too many problems with me, which I can't tell you much about.

This movie is obviously one of those "you love it or hate it" kind of movies. So I hope you get the chance to see it to make up your mind.

I think that the best movies are those that evoke a gut level emotional response, whether it is disgust or laughter, and this one is right on target. In addition to a big grin, I left with the feeling of just going on a whirlwind ride through small town Texas, a witness to the absurdity and humor of real life so well captured by the talented writers and skillfully communicated by the actors. This movie is not for the politically correct anal-lizers, but best enjoyed by the regular person, the one who looks twice at a car wreck and the one who isn't afraid to find humor in the ugliness of this world. It offers the viewer a glimpse of the underbelly of mundane suburbia, a place where oddity is alive and well. Natural Selection moves adeptly between the disturbing tale of madness and murder and the documentary scenes that provide a sort of delightfully sick comic relief to the starkness of human nature's hideousness. The juxtaposition of disgust and humor made me constantly anticipate what would flash before me next. I loved being an observer of White Hills and its cast of characters, together bringing a sweeping view of the strangeness of humanity. From Bowen's brilliant and scary Willie, to his hilariously ignorant cousins, to the insanity of Carradine's Dehoven, to the pitifully funny, monkey collecting parents of one of Willie's victims and all the other eccentrics, I bounced between the reality of these lives well portrayed by the cast and brought up from the Texas dust by the writing of B.J. Burrow and Allen Odom, an up and coming team that promise more great work. This unique movie had the theater in its grasp, and never failed to hold me in this bizarre place. I enjoyed every engaging minute and was sad to see it end. I hope that everyone gets to take the ride through White Hills. It's a great trip!

I'll avoid the obvious critique of "this movie poo poos our society's tendency to glamorize serial killers while simultaneously glamorizing serial killers." A little hypocrisy now and again never hurt anyone and certainly never stopped a movie from being made. It does make a valid point: we do like to make our worst killers into celebrities.

What does bother me is that this movie is not funny or suspenseful or scary. The only emotion this movie will make you feel is bored. The makers of this movie made it by formula, pulling every trick from every movie that everyone has seen and trying to pass it off as their own, as if a convenient bit of repackaging will make us forget where we saw that before. David Carradine: we saw The Omen. The whole movie: we saw Natural Born Killers.

Bob Balaban gives this movie its only bright spot, playing a funny, overly earnest psychoanalytical goof who feels the pain of the killers.

The movie doesn't suck, since there are movies that are much, much worse, but it doesn't entertain, either.

3 out of ten.

David Carradine (yes, the Kung Fu Carradine) plays a major role in this film, and, while he brings considerable talent to the cast -- perhaps the only talent -- much of the time he looks like an actor desperately seeking direction. I feel a little sorry for him. Carradine plays a maverick FBI agent who has gone a little haywire from brushing up against the madness of his serial killer quarry. He stays in a motel room lined with pages torn from a Bible -- a reference to The Omen in which a priest, driven mad by his quest for to confront and battle the Ultimate Evil, lives in a Bible page-lined cell. Carradine's delusional special agent sees his quarry going into a horrifically fast seizures, much like the terrifying spasms of the figures haunting the protagonist in Jacob's Ladder. There are, perhaps, hints of Pulp Fiction here and there as well. Yet these allusions are not enough to save the film -- if anything, they seem to be adolescent expressions of adulation rather than homage to the filmmaker's influences.

I had the joy of catching this flick at a film festival and it is truly a find. Very off-the-wall independent stuff. And very funny. At times you may think it goes over the top, and then it goes further. With the right circumstances, this could have been a great cult hit, as it is much more entertaining, thought provoking and well-acted than something like Donnie Darko.

And Carradine is absurdly hilarious. Is he being serious? Is making fun of himself? I don't know, watch the movie and make your own choice.

The script is the true find of the production as it reads like the perverse parody that 'Natural Born Killers' never amounted to. It jumps back and forth between a sort of film noir and pseudo-documentary - and I wish there had been even more that interplay. It's almost as if the director stumbled onto a movie and didn't realize it was as funny as it ended up being.