Shared Darkness

From Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone to The Simpsons Movie and Stephen King’s Under the Dome, the notion of an area being impenetrably sealed off from contact with the outside world is a well-worn one, full of rich and easy dramatic veins through which to explore notions of human fallibility and transcendence. Unfortunately, said concept gets a tired workout in writer-director Julian Roman Pölsler’s plodding adaptation of Marlen Haushofer’s eponymous 1962 novel — a German/Austrian import so weighed down by a stereotypically angst-ridden voiceover of emotional numbness and philosophical despair that one could be forgiven for thinking Werner Herzog wrote it as a goof.

Set against a beautiful and at times stark northern Austrian mountain landscape, The Wall tells the tale of a nameless woman (Martina Gedeck) who finds herself suddenly and inexplicably cut off from all human contact when an invisible barrier surrounds the cabin where she’s vacationing. At first her only companion is a loyal dog, Lynx. Later, there’s a cow she comes across and names Bella; later still, a kitten she dubs Pearl. The only people she sees, however, exist frozen in time, outside this bubble. After only a couple rather cursory attempts at breaching the wall, the woman focuses her time on survival (changing weather continues unabated in said space) and channels her psychic energies inward; the film then cuts back and forth in time, as she records in a diary notes from her stay of several years.

Certain critics have praised The Wall as intensely cinematic, but apart from its natural scenery and superb sound design (the wall is given an electromagnetic hum) this could scarcely be further from the truth. Rather than even try to let his audience live, labor and panic alongside Gedeck’s character Pölsler instead ports over or invents large swaths of morose narration marked by maddening equivocations. A typical passage goes like this: “I sometimes think X. (pause) I don’t believe that, though — I just wish it so.”

The result is a movie that feels antsy, uncomfortable in its own skin and, somewhat paradoxically, intellectually manic — a schematic exercise in theory and philosophy, with writ-large Metaphorical Import. It takes place in the wild, but is disconnected from it. For a much more interesting portrait of the unforgiving nature of the wild, consider Herzog’s Happy People: A Year in the Taiga instead. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. In Los Angeles, The Wall opens at the Laemmle Royal, the Laemmle Pasadena Playhouse 7 and the Laemmle Encino Town Center 5. (Music Box Films, unrated, 108 minutes)

The idea of an Earth-bound fistfight between a foul-mouthed God and equally lewd Satan, complete with shots to the groin, sounds anarchic and wild. And certainly the participation of a roster of comedically gifted talents inspires some level of buzzy expectation. But in a post-South Park world, lazy execution of a ribald, potentially controversial concept will not suffice — especially not when the apocalypse is being handled with much more wit, vim and verve just across the megaplex, in the form of This Is the End. Thus the judgment of hearty disappointment falls upon Rapture-Palooza, a yawning, slapdash, would-be laffer in which a twentysomething Seattle native grapples with the discomfort and awkwardness of finding herself the object of the Anti-Christ’s affection.

After several billion people are raptured up to heaven, Lindsey (Anna Kendrick) and her boyfriend Ben (John Francis Daley) find themselves left back on Earth, with all the other heathens. The young couple tries to continue to lead some semblance of a normal life, amidst the downpours of blood, pot-smoking wraiths, and cursing crows and locusts, but it’s not that easy. Ben’s sycophantic father (Rob Corddry) has gone to work for the Anti-Christ (Craig Robinson), a garrulous taskmaster born Earl Gundy but who now goes by the moniker of Beast. When he whimsically settles on Lindsey to be his new bride, threatening to kill everyone she knows unless she assents, Lindsey and Ben concoct an on-the-fly, four-part plan to foil the Beast and cage him for 1,000 years.

Written by Chris Matheson and directed by Paul Middleditch, Rapture-Palooza locates a lot of its comedy in polarity. The Beast is a filthy-mouthed asshole who sings songs about his penis and spouts coarse come-ons like, “I bet your vagina tastes like pistachio mint ice cream” (and much worse). Shy-gal narrator Lindsey, meanwhile, is removed in a what-are-you-gonna-do? sort of manner, while the perpetually frustrated Ben finds himself in the awkward position of having his manhood undercut by Satan-in-waiting. To the extent that Rapture-Palooza is appealingly cast, this tack works in fits and starts.

The problem is that the Kevin Smith-type or South Park-y, sacrilegious stuff doesn’t play, because it’s not elevated, smart and specific enough. Plus, there’s no inner logic, even given the very low ceiling of the conceit. With the collapse of civilization, the idea of Ben and Lindsey saving money to operate their own sandwich cart so they in turn can afford to buy a house seems off. Presumably there would be lots of homes newly available, yes?

The movie is basically one big extended, inch-deep riff. It establishes the Beast’s infatuation with Lindsey in short order, gives her eight hours to decide a course of action, and then has she and Ben devise and then attempt to implement said plan to take him down. Laden with voiceover, a compacted first 15 minutes sketches out some of the specifics of this particular post-apocalyptic world, but Rapture-Palooza ignores much fun that could be had with the notion of the Anti-Christ as a former politician, even in ancillary fashion. In fact, pretty much every good idea it has — the notion, for instance, that Lindsey’s mom (Ana Gasteyer) is sent back to Earth after complaining too much at the gates of Heaven — it abandons in short order (frequently in favor of some bit of borderline obscenity from Robinson), as if it’s engaged in a game of plot-point hot potato.

The film’s high point, for those who remember the fifth season “Cape Feare” episode of The Simpsons, and its glorious Sideshow Bob rake-to-the-face bit, involves a litany of repeated shootings when Lindsey and Ben’s plan goes sideways. In its sheer over-the-top absurdity, it elicits out-loud laughs. Unfortunately, it’s too little, too late for Rapture-Palooza, a movie bogged down in a tedious spin cycle of crassness. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Lionsgate, R, 85 minutes)