Art
is subjective, so it’s natural that that it attracts loafers and
passively creative-inclined folks who might otherwise face tougher
roads in occupation tracks with standardized tests and more rigid
systems of accountability and grading out. That’s certainly the feeling
one dotes upon when watching 2002’s Shockheaded, a wrongheaded
blend of Alan Parker, Raymond Chandler, David Cronenberg and David
Lynch that desperately wants to stir up, in noirish fashion, elements
of the psychological thriller, horror and revenge genres. It fails,
wholesale.

The film’s story centers around Noble (Jason Wauer),
a stubbled young guy who rents a room in a rundown hotel and smokes
cigarettes like it’s going out of style. Two cops (Demetrius Parker,
Sr. and Peter Smak) start harassing him about a missing woman (genre
vet Debbie Rochon), and someone additionally starts sliding cryptic
notes under his door telling him to do things. All of this converges
with a disturbing dream Noble has of a white mask lying on the ground
(the iconography smartly used for the cover photograph). Linking these
items together with a further mysterious visitor, Noble sets him off on
a mission that sends him into dark places, believing that if he can
find said woman then he will have answers and get his life back.

Shockheaded is written, directed and also photographed by
Eric Thornett, leaving little doubt as to the root nature of its
shortcomings. It’s decidedly hamstrung by a low budget, but that
shouldn’t automatically relegate it to discount bin. No, what does that
are too tightly framed shots, an utter lack of compositional intrigue,
spare sets and no sense of spatial tension or relationship, and all
manner of rote, inane dialogue. Shockheaded shows rich evidence
of its many influences, but does nothing either particularly new or
even well within the genre; it’s a filmic fan valentine, and a messy
and unfulfilling one at that.

Shockheaded, as you might expect, also wears the scuffy
tribulations of its source material a bit on its sleeves at times, as
its image is rife with grain and color inconsistency and its audio less
than stellar. There are, thankfully, a nice number of supplemental
extras on its DVD, starting with a motion-animated menu that gives way
to a collection of a half dozen deleted and alternate scenes, a goofy
introduction from co-star Rochon and (touted on the packaging, though
unconfirmed here) downloadable MP3 music tracks. There’s also a
106-minute audio-commentary track, with multi-hyphenate Thornett, star
Wauer and composer Jason Russler, in which the trio good-naturedly
detail the film’s Virginia-based production and share a few anecdotes,
including one about dulling the pesky shine of a doorknob with makeup.
In another instance, Thornett cops to the physical impossibility of
certain angles of one of his sets.

Also included are eight trailers from distributor Heretic and another original short film by Thornett, the fourteen-minute Spider Ghost,
with additional optional audio commentary by the writer-director. This
effort is a more straightforwardly comic tale about a guy who moves
into a house only to get into an escalating series of seriocomic
disagreements with titular creepy, crawly inhabitant — it somewhat recalls James Franco’s hallucinatory directorial debut The Ape in this regard — but not necessarily a short that delivers much beyond the thin comedic promise of its premise. D- (Movie) B- (Disc)