If Alfred Hitchcock were alive today he would cover his pudgy face in despair and disappointment upon witnessing the present state of American horror films. Of the handful of individuals who can sincerely claim to have been the founding father of anything, few have been so devoted a caretaker of their progeny as Hitchcock had been to his.
Yet if he were with us today, watching the Hollywood dream factory churn out horror remakes and sequels like stale cans of Vienna sausages, what could he do but wipe the tears from his face like a parent who is perpetually reminded of his child's inability to mature?
When the slasher genre was born in the Bates Motel, it cut through its adolescence like a Texas chainsaw. After Scream-ing past its teenage post-modern angst, it has finally articulated its first identity crisis in a film like Cry_Wolf.
The film is the creative effort of writer/director Jeff Wadlow, a local filmmaker, who secured the funding to make the film after winning the Chrysler Million Dollar Film competition. The movie concerns a group of prep school students who spread an insidious rumor in the wake of a local girl's murder.
The film begins with the girl's execution. As she's chased by the killer through a forest at night, the girl hides behind the drop over a hill. Her breath is short; the killer struggles to find her. Then she gets a call on her cell phone; her location is revealed, and she is killed.
The exposition is a tight introduction to the themes of this mean little film: malevolence, insecurity, and harm in a world saturated by communication, miscommunication and the inability to distinguish the two.
In fact, the title of the film comes from a game the characters play. It's a psychologically carnivorous version of "Duck, duck, goose," and has its players working to uncover who in their group has been labeled the wolf by the referee prior to the game's start. The wolf avoids detection by manipulating, deceiving and feeding off the other players' weaknesses.
As the players expand the game, they raise the stakes and drive the story toward inevitable tragedy. Instead of karmic group therapy for spoiled kids, it escalates into a brutal contest of treachery, malice and one-upmanship.
There are some clever ideas at play here, and the movie is especially observant about the distinction between honesty and truth. However, the film's execution is what sinks the production.
If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then this film is thanking its genre's entire canon. Cry_Wolf consumes almost every slasher convention of the past three decades, gorging on these clichés greedily like it's trapped in a state fair hot dog-eating contest.
In the end, the movie never escapes the confines of the genre it wants to both honor and transcend, because it fulfills neither goal very well. The whole piece is quite confused -- in trying to be so many things, it never becomes much of anything. It is bloated but not expansive, clever but not very wise.
Hitchcock is still crying.
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