With an Evil Dead-esque approach and a battery of comedy performers swinging for the fences, Destroy All Neighbors hit a sweet spot for me.
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For as affectionate as horror fans are of The Evil Dead franchise, it's rare to see a movie that invokes a similar spirit. The latest incarnations of the Evil Dead movies have embraced the excess, especially when it comes to gore, but not the live-action cartoon vibe that Raimi and company adopted since Evil Dead 2. Even in solid horror comedies, desaturated color palettes and spikes of seriousness still exist. Which is a big reason why today's splatter, horror comedy Destroy All Neighbors resonated with me.
The Setup
Jonah Ray stars as William Brown, a timid audio engineering who aspires to make a great prog rock album. But Brown's quiet life is upended when an obnoxious neighbor moves in next door and after a series of escalating conflicts...dies in a horrific accident. Or does he? Soon William is running around town trying to keep his life together as the bodies, and reanimated corpses, pile up.
I vibed with this movie a lot more than I thought I would. Not because this is a horror comedy but because the premise is all about a generally amicable guy who lacks direction going through a ringer, not of his own creation. Those have a tendency to give me secondhand anxiety in a way I really like to avoid.
So why does this one work? A big reason is that all of William's struggles tie in directly to his faults as a person.
When we meet William we might like him, but his faults are obvious. He lacks confidence and direction when it comes to his music. He's bad at socializing and connecting. And he can be a bit of a doormat. So while it might feel cruel that the first time he really pushes back in turns incredibly sour. But also, this could've been avoided if he was more proactive. And as bad as everything quickly turns for him, it might also be the push he needs to finish that damn album he's been working on for so long.
All of this is forcing agency on a guy who, at this point, has rejected agency and connection at every turn. Not only that, but the movie continually uses cruel ironies to demonstrate why Willaim's isolated mindset is preventing him from a more fulfilling artistic and personal life.
The second, and honestly more important one, is that this movie is a cartoon. All of the terrible deaths are over-the-top gory messes carried out with eighties inspired puppetry and prosthetics that's amplified by each re-animated corpse being a charicature whether that's Alex Winters Eastern Bloc type or William's generally incompetent hippie-dippy landlord Eleanor.
We're talking a series of literal talking puppet heads or actors in heavy makeup shit-talking or encouraging William at the worst possible moments.
We're talking a series of literal talking puppet heads or actors in heavy makeup shit-talking or encouraging William at the worst possible moments.
This is also why you make your side characters seasoned comedy performers like Thomas Lennon from Reno 911! or Ray's longtime stand-up show co-host Kumail Nanjiani. Keep almost everything in the daylight with a lot of funny people riffing back and forth while our hero stumbles through his misadventure.
And as much as the ongoing discussions of prog-rock will irk some, if not the genre itself, I think it's fun meta-metaphor for the movie we're watching. As described in the movie, the appeal of prog is that it's all of rock music often within single songs and an ongoing motif "not everyone will get it, but the right people will."
Because this kind of a horror comedy isn't really for everyone. It's handling potential serious topics like death, dismemberment, and even hostage situations like it's all a joke, which is very far from mainstream appeal. Which is very similiar to prog rock, a genre that often features every aspect of rock music into single songs.
The end result is a lark. An over-the-top horror comedy that encourages the audiene to go out and do that thing you've been talking about doing for years, because maybe, much like this movie, someone will find it and love it.
The Verdict: Inspired Silliness
With an Evil Dead-esque approach and a battery of comedy performers swinging for the fences, Destroy All Neighbors hit a sweet spot for me. 7/10
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