Random Acts Of Violence

Dahmer. Bundy. Gacy. Bianchi and Buono. Jack the Ripper. West. Shipman. Sutcliffe. This is a list that could go on forever. Serial killers. The world is obsessed with them and their exploits. Films, books, comics, TV shows, all feed from them and their deeds. Serial killers have become mass media entertainment. But what about the people feeding on all this mass media? That's a question Random Acts Of Violence is asking us. Well one of the questions anyway.

Slasherman. An ultra gory adults only comic book about the unsolved killings along the interstate 90 motorway cutting through America's heartlands. The same motorway Slasherman writer Todd (Jesse Williams) and his wife Kathy (Jordana Brewster) are traversing to get to Comic Con where he can advertise his wares to his slavering fans. Along for the drive is his friend and publisher Ezra (Jay Baruchel who also directs) and his assistant Aurora (Niamh Wilson). Todd is obsessed with the murders and his way of working through his obsession is to pour his heart and imagination out onto the pages of his books. Kathy is interested too but from the point of view of the victims which the eogtistical Todd finds to be in conflict with his own work. As their journey progresses they find that their realities and the images in his books are starting to blend.

The slasher genre is heading towards it's 50th birthday (A Bay Of Blood in 1971 is generally considered the film that started it all) and it's showing no signs of slowing down. Serial killer flicks are 10 a penny these days and the vast majority of them are awful but every now and then something like Random Acts Of Violence comes along and shakes things up. It has all the gore and scares you'd expect but there's substance here too. It's full of barbs and digs at creators of violent media and the people that consume it. Media that's based on real human suffering, exploited for a buck without any real thought of the misery behind it all. Are content creators to blame when fandom becomes obsession? Does violent media begat real life violence? Todd is accused of legitimizing violence, of fetishizing evil. He's faced with probing question from the people who really knew the victims he draws on his pages. This films asks him and therefore us these questions but thankfully never condescends us with the answers, letting us draw our own conclusions.

Which, considering some of the violence on display in the film, would be problematic and very hypocritical. Because Random Acts of Violence is excruciatingly brutal in places. It's rare for films like this not to have blood spilled from the off, but this one takes it's time, building the story and the characters before that first roadside attack, an appalling act that might have some reaching for the off button but because of what we've learned so far it lends a weight to the moment, making it far more hard hitting than any similar scene in a Friday The 13th/Scream film. The bloodspilling in RAOV, however well done it may be also gives the film an air of having its cake and eating it too. It blurs the questions it asks. "Is violent entertainment a problem?" while being violent entertainment itself. You'll finish the film thinking anyway, which is more than usually happens.

Baruchel, best known for his brilliant TV show Undeclared and for being the BFF of Seth Rogen in numerous Judd Apatow flicks has done well here with his first directorial toedip into horror and it's obvious he knows and loves the genre and does so with an eye on what tropes to subvert also. Late in the film the plotline gets a bit silly, but silliness has long been a main ingredient in horror and when the movie tips into full on Dario Argento by way of Tobe Hooper territory near the end horror fans will be too gleeful to care.

Random Acts Of Violence is streaming online at shudder.com now. And it's only 80 minutes long too. Score.