The Horror Show
Judy
by Emanuele De Santi
I don't make it a point to go out of my way to see films from all over the world but luckily it happens naturally. There's so much out there and the more places you explore, the more stuff you come up with. Every area is equally capable of producing wonderful, acceptable, and dreadful work. Usually I find myself seeing what horrific stuff is going on in Asia since I've discovered my love for extreme horror from Japan, South Korea, China etc. Occasionally I'll see a great flick from Europe, like France, England etc. It's been a while, however, since I've seen an Italian film of any genre but thanks to the work of Emanuele De Santi, that's no longer true. But what did I think of his latest effort, Judy?
Emanuele De Santi is largely known in the horror world for his 2011 blood-soaked artery-spraying action/horror epic, Adam Chaplin, in which he wrote, directed and starred. Judy is quite a different type of film and in the end my feelings were mixed. Did I think it was terrible? Not at all. Did I think it was a waste of potential? Unfortunately, in lot of ways, yes, it was. If I didn't have so much interest in the concept, Judy would just be another film I saw and forgot about, but it was unique enough and had moments of greatness, so instead I find myself torn.
Judy is a story that is both simple and all over the place at the same time. The film opens with a clown/mime/street performer who finds her way to another performer she knows personally. Things are clearly bad for the first performer and her “friend” is not all that sympathetic to her situation. The scene ends with the first performer being skewered with a bunch of nails and then blown away by a pipe-shotgun contraption. I really liked the opening; the acting wasn't great, but since the version I watched was dubbed in English, I'm not sure that it's an accurate representation of their work on screen. The opening scene laid out what I wanted to see: group of street performing clown weirdos who handle their stuff like a mob and have no problem getting bloody.
The film then switches gears, however, as the murderous clown starts to harass a woman who is driving in her car. She asks for change, the woman refuses. The clown gets pushy and the woman pulls out a gun to emphasize her point. At home, the woman finds that her dog, Judy, is missing and things just kind of go from there. The film dissolves into a Strangers type scenario with the scared woman in her house as street performers make their attack on her. All the while she's trying to find her dog, Judy.
The film comes across as if someone who had a masterful understanding of a great idea had to run for some reason and gave the index-cards to someone else. That or De Santi got passed the beginning and decided that fleshing out the initial atmosphere was too trying and just decided to go with this instead. The bite-size description of the synopsis sounded really confusing and over-involved, so at first I was relieved to see the story take on a more grounded approach. That was, however, with the understanding that once the baseline story was laid down things would still get intense and crazy. I suppose that was the intention, but it didn't really go that way.
I feel like the bulk of the movie was just the main character running around her house looking for her dog while she frantically talks to her mother on the phone. It's not necessarily bad, but not at all the level of thrill I was hoping I would be experiencing from such a project. The climax is more intense and bloody than the bulk of the movie, more like the beginning, but random and confusing in a way that didn’t mesh with the rest. This wasn't a slow-burn film that erupted into chaos, it was more a film that just lost steam in the middle and scrambled to make up for it in the ending. While I like the end, as in the literally cut to credits, the third act didn’t quite work for me. It's more in the vein of what I wanted to see, but did little to incorporate itself into the rest of the story. It didn't make the slower parts suddenly more necessary or the end itself incredibly memorable. It just felt like mostly filler capped off with random insanity.
All in all I want it on the record that I consider Emanuele De Santi to be a very talented filmmaker. Unlike Adam Chaplin De Santi decided to stay away from the spotlight of being the face of the film and explored his talents behind the camera. And those talents are evident here. There were moments, shots, and use of sound in the film that I liked and it showed that De Santi is a man capable of creating a unique image and relaying it to the screen. Unfortunately, however, this evidence is merely sprinkled here and there; reassuring you it exists while the bulk of the film just sat around and did nothing for the style. Any creepy factor with the horrific performers/clowns trying to get at the woman is doused by there being no nails throughout the story to keep the walls up. So what we are left with is a film that occasionally grabs attention before cutting the good stuff with flour to make it seventy-four minutes. What could have been a tight, cleaner cut film still felt too long despite the short run-time.
I'm looking forward to seeing more from Emanuele De Santi and I’m curious where he'll go next. While Judy wasn't exactly a flawless success, it didn't completely turn me off the director's work either, and there were enough good bits and style choices to keep me thinking something great might be just around the corner.
P.J. Griffin, HMS
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