Frisk

Perhaps it's not entirely fair for me to review this movie since I walked out in disgust about halfway through and came back only for the last ten minutes. But I agree with Dennis Cooper: The literal interpretation of his book makes the film an entirely predictable exploitation flick - in terms of narrative and in the amateurish way it's all presented - instead of a compelling and artful auto-interrogation of f*cked-up desire. The most damage done is by director Todd Verow's inability to transpose the colloquial first-person of the book into something that makes sense for a movie. At this point in his career, he doesn't have the skills to pull it off, which results in a decision to make the serial killing explicitly real. I suppose Verow thinks that makes his movie more transgressive than Cooper's book which only tells me he didn't understand the book in the first place. Verow can be a creative and entertaining filmmaker - his Once and Future Queen is a scream; and Anonymous showed promise - but Frisk is dull and obvious, and only a half-star away from being complete garbage.

This film is about a gay man who has had fantasies about killing other men since teenage.

Honestly, I see little point in the existence of "Frisk". It is a poorly made B movie with poor acting and poor production. The plot is not well explained or particularly engaging. Apart from the main character Dennis, there is no character development. So most people in the film seem like random people, making the plot more confusing to follow.

I am very disturbed by these perverted and sick minds portrayed in the movie. It is not a film for me.

I really don't see how anyone that hasn't read the book could possibly really understand what this film is supposed to be about. The character development was pretty weak, making me constantly wonder *why* the characters were doing what they were doing... and never getting an answer. And the acting really didn't help either. It was just... well, bad. It made the characters look cheap and one dimensional. Dialogue was spoken as if it was the actors' first times going over the script. You know, porn-like. I really don't get why people act like this was such a disturbing movie... I was bored throughout mostly the entire thing. If the characters had been straight, it may very well have been just another late night HBO erotic thriller.

If I had to guess, I'd say this film was made solely to shock, not to actually tell a really quite interesting story written by a brilliant author.

Pretty awful. Even though I had read and loved the book, I couldn't make heads or tails of the movie. Although one thing needs to be pointed out, in the films brief conventional narrative moment, Craig Chester is brilliant as the semi-comatose whore. When his trick for the evening is trying to drag his lifeless body out of his house, Chester wakes up to ask if there was anything he could have done better for them. It's hard to explain, but in a way, that one moment almost gives this terrible, rootless film a sense of humanity that leaves an impression. I would watch the first 30 minutes again for that scene alone.

This is another of those art films that goes nowhere but gets there in style. This film is gritty and fascinating in a sick, can't help but look at the car wreck on the highway sort of way. It's not bad enough to turn off so you keep watching hoping that sanity will be restored. It won't be but you watch nonetheless.