Generally, dark, dour movies about wild hedonists just do not work.
For one thing, if nonstop crime, drugs and partying don't make you happy, what hope do we have for real life?
More importantly, trashy characters are no good to watch unless they're a) getting their comeuppance or b) having way, way too much fun. If they're being smirky and hateful and not even enjoying themselves, we're in for a long, stupid ride -- in other words, a classic Big Awful Friday.
So next time you feel like punishing yourself for a random hookup or a woohoo bender, rent up 2008's Pathology.
Milo Ventimiglia is a hotshot pathologist. He and his colleagues are supposed to determine the causes of death of the hospital's patients, but Michael Weston has a different plan: using their skills to commit perfect and untraceable murders.
Being killed by the people who are supposed to make us better? That's good movie fodder. Instead, Pathology uses its concept to deliver a hot, sleazy mess that's in dire need of assisted suicide.
It's hard to pin down just what it does worst, but the dialogue of Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor reads like snippets from an upset teen's diary. And not the fake diary he leaves around to trick his mom, the real one he hides in the ceiling. The one that says stuff like "Yeah, we're all gonna die anyway" and discusses how the world is full of nothing but pimps, pedophiles and people who mow their lawn before noon.
The sheer psychological acuity of "Hey wait, people are awful!" is matched in insight by Ventimiglia's descent into nihilism.
Immediately after Weston shows him a whorehouse, he's smoking meth, murdering people, and getting seven kinds of naked with a woman who is definitely not his fiancee.
Then again, who hasn't suffered a total moral crash after being disillusioned? I beat up my neighbors when I learned there wasn't any Santa Claus. When I learned that sometimes bad things happen to good people, I blew up a school.
If the dum-dum dialogue and motivations aren't enough to ruin your day, perhaps you will hate the disjointed story and crippling lack of suspense. Or maybe you'll just hate the sneering, juvenile characters, who spend their abundant free time dropping crass, one-line philosophies like "Nobody owns anyone" and making out with each other.
The whole experience is uglier than a spider with crooked teeth. Pathology is what a movie looks like when it's made by people who hate everything, including the idea of creating anything watchable.
* Contact Ed Robertson at edwrobertson@gmail.com
