Excisão

Excision is an artistically blood-soaked film that will have you squirm in your seat one moment and laugh in the next, thanks to its cleverly dark humor. I've never really seen a film quite like this as it's in its own league of twisted shenanigans. The most unique character study of 2012.

AnnaLynne McCord completely disappears into her character and gives an insanely off the wall, brilliant performance that will leave you bug-eyed. She plays Pauline, a disturbed 18-year-old high school student that has a strange fetish for blood. She desperately wants a career in the medical field and goes to the extreme to practice it, as she tries to get approval from her mother. Traci Lords also impressed me as the over controlling mom Phyllis, who tries hard to get through to her unbalanced daughter to no avail. She has a lot of layers to her character as she can be ruthless in one scene and caring in the next, I really felt sorry for her in the end. The rest of the cast was pretty impressive and you might recognize Ariel Winter from Modern Family who plays the younger sister Grace, who is ill with Cystic Fibrosis. The dad, Roger Bart plays Bob, he plays a helpless role of a guy stuck in the middle of the chaos. There are also appearances from John Waters, Malcolm McDowell and Marlee Matlin, which was entertaining to see them in the film.

Director, Richard Bates Jr. makes an explosive début as newcomer of this genre and has a bold eye that's unflinching. The disturbing style, nature mixed with the dark humor, yet at the same time visceral, is just bloody brilliant. He is one to look out for, as this is an insane first effort! Overall, Excision is not a movie for all tastes, but the bluntness, wit, dark humor, unapologetic attitude and blood drenched, stylishly brooding dreamscapes, made it refreshing and daring. The ending was shocking, but I was kind of unsure what to make of it. One of the more memorable horror offerings of 2012.

This film played as part of the 2012 Sydney Film Festival's "Freak Me Out" section. Director, Richard Bates Jr, set out to make a movie that he and his friends would have loved to watch in high school. This he's achieved and so much more.

From the outset, Excision seizes your attention, with its deliciously macabre imagery and malevolent audio track. Unfolding amidst the perfect banality of middle class suburbia, the stage is set for a savage assault on your sensibilities.

Annalynne McCord is fantastic as Pauline - the slouched, ragged, blemished, sociopathic, vexed atheist, sangrephile*, virgin with surgical aspirations and necrophilic fantasies.

In fairness, the entire cast is impressive. You need to keep in mind that this film is the debut feature for a 25 y/o and he claims that persistence worked a charm in signing the talent -- including an Academy Award Winner!

But it's the fantasy sequences that will leave you truly in awe of Excision. Pauline's dreams are tantalisingly lurid, so utterly vile -- yet shot so beautifully. Luminous and vibrant, these scenes impact and leave a stain that won't come out in a cold wash. In fact, at least one person passed out at the screening I attended -- for real.

Far from wallowing in this depravity, Excision succeeds in exploring complex relationships, themes of religious zealotry and how problematic being a self-taught expert can be. All this and a killer soundtrack to boot.

I have to add that I had the extraordinary privilege of enjoying the greatest Q&A session in Sydney Film Festival history! Richard Bates was "slightly intoxicated" and proceeded to share some outrageous stories with us all. It caused a slight scandal, but, given the content of the film we all came to watch, his conduct was completely acceptable. Moreover, it was rare to see a person be so genuine and hysterically funny.

With his next project in the works, Richard Bates Jr just might be a name to keep an eye out for. I mean, if Peter Jackson can start with Bad Taste...I'm just sayin'... ;)

More importantly, for those of you with a taste for twisted film making - Excision is a must see.

*sangrephile - I made this up because I couldn't find a word for someone who loves blood & isn't a vampire!

In Excision, a high school misfit goes to great lengths to win over her domineering, conservative mother. Although it's presented as a horror film - and opened the Spooky Movie International Horror Film Festival - it's a psychosexual thriller, rife with imagery set against a pastiche of normative teenage angst and desperation. It is a brilliant, provocative, unsettling film.

Pauline (AnnaLynne McCord) is the misfit. Scarred with acne and and overall unkempt look and poor posture, she is the poster child for unpopularity. But, like many cinematic rebels before her, she looks upon the idea of being liked almost with disdain. The opinions of others don't influence her.

Pauline aspires to be a doctor, but she is anything but a model student. She challenges her teachers and plays her classmates against each other for her own gain. She has no friends, and her therapy consists of visits to the local priest, whereupon she notes the hypocrisy of his understanding her moral issues when he's by definition pretty repressed himself.

She's part of a nuclear family. Dad Bob (Roger Bart) is a success at something, but he's under the thumb of his controlling wife Phyllis (Traci Lords). Sister Grace is the favorite of the family, partly because she's so nice and good and sweet but also because she is suffering from cystic fibrosis.

Of all the people with whom Pauline interacts on a regular basis, she cares only for Grace. She despairs of her sister's imminent death and wishes the same on her mother. Typical for a teenager, to an extreme perhaps.

Throughout the movie, Pauline sets particular goals for herself and then completes them, in opposition to her attitude toward school and life in general. When her mother forces her to be (at an advanced age) part of a cotillion, Pauline understandably ruins the affair. But when she wants to pursue a career in medicine, she goes to the library (cutting school) and researches her sister's condition.

You may well ask what the title implies. Something is being excised. We've already established that Pauline wants to be a doctor, but what is to be excised is something I cannot reveal here. On a less literal front, Pauline wants to excise her mother's influence from her own life and the pain and suffering from that of her sister.

This is not a movie for the faint of heart. It is not dripping with blood and contains no projectile vomiting, but Pauline's dreams - which include impromptu surgeries that equate to intercourse in her mind - are erotic, disturbing, grisly, and symbolic.

McCord nails the role of Pauline. Dolled up for the cotillion, she looks almost presentable, but even when she's her slovenly self you can see her beauty - eyes, wit, intelligence, smile - even if no one else in the movie can. McCord sells the film by subtly morphing Pauline from an outcast to a sociopath; at first, you take her for just another weird kid in the hall, but over time you see her as clearly losing her grip on reality.

And I didn't think I'd say this, but Lords is really good - in an ironic role - as the pushy, moralizing mom. Traci, you've come a long way, baby.

It's very hard to believe this is writer/director Richard Bates Jr.'s first film, feature or otherwise. The writing is tight, and he gets a lot out of his cast - which includes John Waters and Malcolm McDowell. It's a stunning debut.

I wasn't sure how the movie was going to end, although it was clear I was being led in a particular direction. I wasn't misled, but the conclusion is still a knockout; leaving just enough unresolved to be satisfying.

Excision is thrilling, a movie that will resonate with anyone who's felt unloved and with anyone who likes tales of revenge and redemption. It wisely picks a course and never goes too over the top with its set pieces. It's not a mild-mannered film, but it's also not an overwrought, ham-fisted gorefest. It's cleverly nuanced, achingly acted, and a mind- blowing masterpiece.

"Excision" is a consistently interesting concoction from the mind of writer / director Richard Bates Jr. Combining straight drama, horror, and very dark comedy, it's twisted to its core, with a very memorable character driving the plot forward.

That character is Pauline (AnnaLynne McCord, in an utterly fearless performance), a strange and off putting teenage girl living with a sister (Ariel Winter) who has cystic fibrosis, a reserved father (Roger Bart), and a demanding mother (long ago porn queen Traci Lords, who finally gets a chance to show some real acting chops) whose love Pauline desperately tries to win, while deluding herself into thinking she could have a career in surgery.

Some of the cast members (Malcolm McDowell, Ray Wise, Matthew Gray Gubler, John Waters (as a reverend!) and especially Oscar winner Marlee Matlin) have what amount to little more than cameo roles, but it's still nice to see all of these familiar faces. Anyway, McCord and Lords do a fine job of carrying the movie, and their scenes are uncomfortable as they're clearly meant to be yet undeniably compelling.

Bates sets his story in a typically placid looking suburbia which serves as an appropriate contrast to the bizarre psycho sexual elements of his plot. He serves up plenty of grotesque, bloody imagery for the horror crowd yet films it all in such a slick way that it's oddly beautiful. He takes full advantage of the 2.35:1 aspect ratio in which the movie is shot, considering the way he arranges actors and objects within the frame.

Adventuresome cult movie lovers tired of the soulless quality of bigger budgeted studio based productions should appreciate the daring with which Bates approaches this material. Once it's all over it's the kind of thing you *don't* easily forget; the ending is not that surprising but it's pretty devastating just the same.

Seven out of 10.

A paradoxical myriad of influences and styles runs through Excision, the feature debut from NYU graduate Richard Bates Jr. A development of his 18 minute short which played the festival circuit in 2008, the film charts a brief spell in the life of Pauline (AnnaLynne McCord), one of the most dysfunctional teenagers to hit the screen since Todd Solondz's Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995). Far less fetishized than Terry Zwigoff's teenage female outcasts, Pauline is the epitome of awkward. Her gait eschews any form of grace, leaving her a hunched over, lumbering mess. Even keeping her mouth closed appears, at times, to be too much effort. In short, she's the perfect representation of the unfathomable levels of apathy and brooding that exist within the mind of the troubled teen.

McCord, better known to television viewers as the star of shows such as Nip/Tuck and 90210, is almost unrecognisable as the scowling girl with greasy hair and bad skin. It was not, however, an easy part for her to attain. In a recent interview both Bates Jr. and McCord stated that it was a difficult process. From the offset, the director refused to entertain McCord's persistent applications to be associated with the feature. Luckily for us her tenacity paid off and she was granted an audition. Bates' scepticism continued until the young actress showed her commitment to the feature by responding to the statement that she would have to cut her hair for the role by hacking at her locks right there and then. Seeing more of Pauline in the glamorous actress than he could ever have imagined, the partnership was made and the process began.

One of the aforementioned paradoxes within the film is the drafting in of a delightful range of the Hollywood bad boys (and girls); Traci Lords, John Walters, Malcolm McDowell and Ray Wise all appear. All of these characters could have been utilised as the outsiders and freaks of the movie with whom Pauline connects and finds solace, yet in a clever play against type, it is this motley crew who comprise the upstanding, conservative and unprogressive adults in the movie. Lords plays Pauline's God-fearing mother Phyllis with her trademark vigour and wit, clearly loving the experience of taking the moral high ground over the rebellious youth. Waters plays a chaplain and Wise and McDowell both work at the school as headmaster and teacher respectively.

Pauline aspires to one day become a successful surgeon, something which is greatly hindered by her lack of academic capability. Experimenting on roadkill and dreamily pondering over medical textbooks culminates in bizarre fantasies which range from brutal eviscerations to necrophilia.

All of this is heavily coincides with the social dilemmas which she faces on a daily basis (ranging from puberty to friends and relationships). Modern Family's Ariel Winter plays Grace, Pauline's younger sister, who is suffering from Cystic Fibrosis. The strain which her illness puts upon the family often trivialises the nature of Pauline's growing pains. This parallel makes for one of the most interesting aspects of the movie, alluding to the insular and self- absorbed nature of the teen mind.

There is a great deal of dark humour on display in Excision. Humour as pitch black as coal and as sharp as surgical steel. The nightmarish surrealism which is achieved will resonate for days afterwards. A well written and enjoyable debut which manages to balance a sinister side with a tender character study, resulting in an exceptionally strong feature, Excision is well deserving of the praise which it is currently receiving.

Excision is available now through Monster Pictures UK. You can find out more about the movie on the Official Website, Twitter or Facebook.

Colin McCracken writes extensively for zombiehamster.com as well as a number of genre publications. He can be found on Twitter as @zombiehamster