The Demolisher. Directed by Gabriel Carrer. Cast Ry Barrett, Tianna Nori, Jessica Vano. For more information visit viff.org.
Worse than your college roommate, is living with revenge.
The Demolisher is a revenge movie about the toll vengeance takes on self, soul and sanity. Often still and frequently silent, Gabriel Carrer's new flick is a subversion of the roaring rampage that typifies cinematic retribution. The movie starts and something bad happens to The Demolisher's woman. That set-up is a staple of revenge movies ranging from Desperado to Death
Wish to Diamonds Are Forever (and those are just the D's). But what makes this movie unique is its restraint. There's no shot of the bloodied victim gazing up at her smirking assailants; the avenger doesn't leave the woman's bedside/funeral to step into a training montage.
"We've seen that before a million times," Carrer explains.
The director says he shot a more conventional opening but opted to chop it in favour of a minimalistic approach. "It does hurt in some ways for people who are used to formulaic, structured films," he allows. Instead of revving up for payback, the audience wallows in the attack's aftermath with Samantha (Tianna Nori) and her demolishing husband, Bruce (Ry Barrett). It's a life of pain pills, hospital visits, nightmares and anger, lots of anger.
Bruce is that guy you pray won't sit next to you on the SkyTrain. He seethes, he glares, he makes Charles Bronson look chipper. Once he puts on his hunting costume and takes to the streets of Toronto he becomes the Lay's potato chips of beatdowns - he can't punch anyone just once.
His costume is creepy motocross equipment and the type of helmet prison guards slap on when it's time to quell a riot.
"When Bruce puts on his suit that's his way of transforming himself," Carrer explains.
The Demolisher's "suit of armour" is a layer of protection but the motocross gear is also the uniform of thrillseekers, the director points out.
It took seven months and a parade of security checks to get his hands on the helmet, Carrer reports. The effect is worth the wait.
Without the helmet, Bruce is tormented. With it, he's a tormentor. He becomes a device that gives beatings; no different from The Shape that donned a white William Shatner mask and stalked Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween.
Speaking to Carrer, the director gets giddy talking about '70s horror flicks like Halloween and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.
For The Demolisher, Carrer says he wanted to make a movie with "horror film sensibilities" that wasn't necessarily a horror movie.
"It just evolved into a dream, almost like a nightmare." The nightmare atmosphere is accentuated by Glen Nicholls' score.
Carrer stumbled on the composer/producer when he was in his car listening to a remix of a song by The Prodigy.
"I heard the remix and I'm like, who did this song? This is amazing!" he recalls. Carrer never wrote a full script, but he sent 48 pages detailing the movie's arc to Nicholls, who turned in an original, synth-based score. "Sound was really big for this film because of the lack of dialogue and the stillness that's in it," Carrer says. "This was a very still movie.. .. There's some scenes where (the actors) were told not to blink." Underlining that stillness is a percussive score that's a bit reminiscent of the music from The Terminator, brimming with malice but not much melody. While he was making the movie, Carrer says he usually had a movie playing nearby, always on mute with just the score playing. He hopes movie fans will enjoy his movie the same way. "You could put this movie on in the background with a really cool score playing," he says. "If you're on your computer doing work, just put on The Demolisher."
The movie screens Oct. 5 at International Village and Oct. 9 at the Rio Theatre.
