Review by Ben Bussey
If you’ll forgive me for opening on something of a negative note: one rather noticeable problem on the horror festival scene this year – and I do mean across the board, not just at Abertoir – is the absence of any one film that’s well and truly set the (mimes quotation marks) horror fan community ablaze with debate. If you think about it, most years there’s at least one horror title which winds up inspiring an extreme reaction, typically splitting audiences right down the middle like a circular saw. Serbian Film, Kill List, American Mary, The Woman: whether you loved them or hated them, chances are you were talking about them once they played the festivals. Somehow, this just doesn’t seem to have happened in 2013. No one film has leapt forward for a vocal section of horror fandom to declare the year’s greatest, only for a marginally less vocal contingent to vehemently disagree.
Motivational Growth, thus far, doesn’t seem to be doing this. But from what I’ve seen of 2013’s genre output, I’d say it’s the film most likely to.* I can see it being loved and despised in equal measure, and given that from start to finish it practically screams “DEBATE ME!” at the audience, I foresee plenty of people doing just that. I can also envisage a great many viewers from moment to moment finding themselves uncertain, much as I was, as to whether or not they are actually enjoying themselves.
If I were to try and surmise Motivational Growth in one quick soundbite (as indeed I did not long after the Abertoir screening) it would be this – Henenlotter directs Garden State. A blend of profoundly digusting body horror and (dependent on your viewpoint, even more digusting) introspective hipster angst, writer-director Don Thacker’s debut feature is at once alienating yet highly relatable, low brow yet high brow. It has very much the feel of a stageplay with its single setting, minimal cast and in particular its overly verbose script with a great many monologues delivered direct to camera. In the midst of this we’ve got a bunch of cable TV spoofs, many of which spin off into bizarre dream sequences (or are they?) and an ear-catching 8-bit soundtrack. So… Henenlotter directs Garden State by way of Samuel Beckett and Stay Tuned, perhaps…?
Anyway – over 400 words in, a synopsis is overdue. Our protagonist Ian (Adrian DiGiovanni) is, in pretty much every sense, a mess. He hasn’t left his apartment in a very long time, hasn’t bathed or groomed himself in any capacity in months, and from the look of things hasn’t cleaned up his apartment in an even longer time. Is this some sort of social experiment? Is he really just that lazy? Or is he a superlatively troubled man in dire need of help? A bit of all three, I think. Naturally Ian also avoids human contact wherever possible, but when his one constant companion – his vintage 1960s television set – packs up and dies on him, he decides on suicide. However, something goes wrong, and Ian soon finds that his bizarre chosen method of dispatch has not ended his life, but seems to have brought forth an intelligent lifeform from the mould growing in his bathroom (yes, Americans, I spelt it with a ‘U,’ deal with it). Speaking to him – in the voice of Jeffrey Combs, no less – the Mould starts telling Ian to do things, and in some unexpected ways it actually seems to help him in many respects. But of course, things are not as rosy as the seem – assuming a friendship between a man and a sentinent pile of scum seemed especially rosy to begin with.
The oddity of this premise notwithstanding, Motivational Growth may sound straightfoward enough – but it really isn’t. I won’t go into too much detail about what transpires, partly to avoid spoilers but perhaps above else because in all honesty I’m not entirely sure I understood it at all times; I’m relatively confident I’ve got the ending figured out, but I wouldn’t put money on it. This being the case, I’ll just stick to a brief summation of what worked and what didn’t. First off, on the plus side: it looks and sounds great. Presumably this was a pretty low budget affair, but it would seem they put the money in the right places; the single location setting must surely have helped in that regard. There’s a sense of real beauty to the squalor, ugliness and at times truly revolting sights that transpire in Ian’s apartment. Adrian DiGiovanni is on screen for pretty much the duration, and he does great work embodying the frightened, despairing defeatist within us all. The Mould itself skirts a fine line between genuine creepiness and Little Shop of Horrors camp, but it’s not like we’re not supposed to find it absurd. Combs’ voice was, I must admit, almost unrecognisable at first; he brings a little bit of Elvis to it, I feel.
As for the potential downsides: as I said, this is a cryptic, stagey and for the most part resolutely non-naturalistic piece, so to take any of it too much on face value is to probably miss the point. Even so, there are more down-to-earth elements that strain credibility somewhat. For one thing, quite how Ian has been able to finance his stay at home lifestyle for so long without being evicted or dying of malnutrition is never really made clear. Rather more bothersome, however, is the relationship which somehow springs up between Ian and Leia (Danielle Doetsch), a pretty neighbour he’s taken to gawking at through his front door peephole. Okay, slight spoiler here I suppose… whilst she initially confronts Ian over his somewhat creepy behaviour, not long thereafter she returns claiming to have liked it, inviting herself in. Here’s where the Garden State connection really hits home: Leia very much embodies what I believe is commonly referred to as the Manic Pixie Dream Girl (I may be missing some adjectives there), inasmuch as for no really discernible reason she takes a shine to our loser hero and makes it her personal mission to redeem him with her loving, free-spirited ways. In other words – she’s an utterly two dimensional plot device and a bit of a creepy cliche in these kind of hipster male fantasies. There’s nothing wrong with Doetsch’s performance; it’s just the classic case of it being easy to see why he would be interested in her, but almost impossible to see why she’d be interested in him. (Incidentally, I fucking hated Garden State.)
But perhaps that again is me taking things a bit too much on face value. Once more, it’s clear from start to finish that Motivational Growth is not meant to directly reflect the real world. As an allegory for the lethargy and pessimism that can so easily set in as we do our bit to adjust to adult life, it absolutely works, and the ridiculously garrulous nature of the incidental characters who pop up (landlord, delivery girl, TV repair men) can be taken to indicate the total alienation from our fellow human beings which we may very well feel under those circumstances. Still, quite what Thacker’s film is really saying… again, I’m not quite sure. I think I’d need to get at least a couple more viewings under my belt before I’d want to make an educated guess.
And yes, this is definitely a movie I’d be eager to see again. I certainly hope Motivational Growth does get distribution, as it’s a film which I daresay does warrant repeat viewing and widespread debate. No, not everyone’s going to like it; indeed, I gather not everyone at Abertoir did (I believe there were some walk-outs). But it’s well worth giving a chance. Just be sure to go in with strong reserve, not to mention a strong stomach. (Seriously, I ate a fried mushroom less than 24 hours after the screening, and it was hard not to gag…)
* Well, I guess there’s also The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears… but honestly, everyone seems to just fucking hate that, myself included, and I suspect the vast majority are going to be similarly inclined.