By Ben Bussey
There are a great deal of indie horror filmmakers out there who would do well to take a leaf out of Dustin Wayde Mills’s book. Anyone who follows our reviews here at Brutal As Hell (gawd bless you, whoever you are) will no doubt have seen us complain time and again of how frequently indie horror lets itself down. While the opportunity is there to make a genuine break from the norm and take risks which the studios won’t, so many new indie horrors are content to regurgitate tried and tested genre tropes over and over with little to no wit, invention or courage, producing nothing more than another wave of nondescript tripe to fill the bottom shelves of supermarket DVD aisles. Mills, however, is a no-budget filmmaker who truly does his own thing. Not only is he astonishingly prolific, having made an average of four films a year for the past three years, he also handles distribution of his films himself, and the films he writes and directs (as well as shooting, editing and various other roles) have a clear, singular vision. While there are readily apparent sales points to his films – notably a proclivity for abundant full nudity, and practical gore FX – Mills doesn’t seem at all concerned with making films that are to all tastes.
However, while such films as The Puppet Monster Massacre, Zombie A-Hole, Easter Casket and Bath Salt Zombies display (as should be evident from the titles alone) leanings toward trashy, absurdist comedy horror, there has always been a character-based, emotional underpinning to Mills’s work, and more recent efforts have seen him move in a somewhat different direction. His 2014 film Her Name Was Torment was an altogether darker display of gruesome violence with, for once, a female antagonist brutalising a male prisoner; yet while it boasted all the signature gore and nudity, there was a radically different tone, and an almost arthouse sensibility. Having dipped the proverbial toe into artier waters, Mills’ latest release Applecart sees him plunge right in. Once again, the results will not be to all tastes, and were never intended to be; but even for those who generally like their movies a bit bizarre, this might still push them out of their comfort zone. Applecart may not make for the easiest viewing, nor is it necessarily an unequivocal success, and it might easily be accused of being at least a little pretentious, but credit must be given where it’s due – this is about as far from safe, by-the-numbers indie horror as you can get.
As offbeat as it is, Applecart is easy enough to surmise: it’s a silent, black and white portmanteau film in which all cast members wear blank white face masks at all times. There’s an old-fashioned silent movie score, some ambient noise and judicious use of applause, laughter and boos from an unseen audience, but not a word of dialogue is spoken nor are any caption cards used beyond the titles for the four short stories, with shots of a barrel of glistening apples bridging each tale (apples also being the only food anyone seems to eat in the storyworld). Each story takes place within a seemingly conventional suburban setting, dealing with the unseemly goings-on beneath the surface of what we like to think of as civilised society. Forbidden lusts are indulged, acts of hideous cruelty perpetrated – and all of it is conveyed entirely via physical mannerisms without facial expressions, though sometimes the eyes come into play.
Okay, so the core themes of Applecart – as summed up in the taglines ‘Nothing Is Normal’ and ‘We All Wear Masks’ – aren’t exactly new; for time immemorial, horror has been pointing out that the real monsters in this world are those that hide behind a veneer of normalcy and respectability. Nor are the key horrors of Applecart – incestuous desire, negligence and abuse of the old and infirm, religious fanaticism as an excuse for child abuse, and so forth – by any means horrors we have never seen explored in film before. Still, in taking such a distinct approach, Mills draws viewers to engage in a rather different way with such unpalatable material, more typically explored in kitchen sink drama. Indeed, it might be debated just how much Applecart can really be classed as a horror film; there’s nothing supernatural at work, and there’s an unusual lack of gore for a Mills movie. Still, as the cover art might suggest his taste for shooting naked women remains unabated: after we open on a completely decontextualised scene of a large-breasted masked woman stripping and masturbating, we subsequently see every female cast member at least partially nude, several fully, regular Mills actresses Haley Madison, Erin R Ryan and Allison Egan among them. Male nudity is by contrast somewhat sparse, a few eye-opening erect penis shots notwithstanding – although the end credits reveal the use of prosthetic for at least some of these moments. It’s certainly not hard, then, to lay accusations of sexism and sleaziness at Mills’ feet – yet Applecart manages to avoid a sleazy, exploitative vibe for the most part. Perhaps the preoccupation with bare flesh can seem a bit puerile, and even get a bit repetitive – by the third or fourth masturbation scene, I did find myself muttering “really, again?” – but it certainly goes some way to keeping the viewer alert and at attention. The trick is what a filmmaker does with the viewer’s attention whilst they have it – and Mills clearly isn’t out to provide simple wank fodder here. I like to think I’m not too easy to shock, but Applecart left me distinctly uncomfortable at times, and there isn’t a doubt in my mind that this is precisely the desired effect.
At a little under 60 minutes, Applecart may be a comparatively short anthology film which might have done well to squeeze in a fifth chapter, but I generally consider brevity to be a greater virtue than a lot of filmmakers tend to think, and particularly when a film takes so unconventional an approach as this it pays not to overstay its welcome. I’m left uncertain as to whether Applecart is a film I’ll ever have any great desire to revisit, or whether I even enjoyed it as such – yet I won’t hesitate to recommend it simply because, as previously stated, it’s the kind of genuinely bold, risk-taking filmmaking that we would love to see more of from the indie horror scene, and it certainly leaves me keen to see which other strange places Dustin Wayde Mills will go from here.
Applecart is available on DVD and Blu-ray from the Dustin Mills Productions site.
Applecart Teaser Trailer from Dustin Mills on Vimeo.