Silver Screen Resolution, Take Two: The Revenant

For my 2018 Resolution Project, I decided to take a page out of Lane’s book and do my own Silver Screen Resolution (hence the Take Two part of the title). There are a lot of movies out there I haven’t seen but feel like I should have, or movies that I’ve simply wanted to see and have yet to get around to it. With a deadline of some kind, now I’ll have to finally make a point to find them, get them, and watch them. My rules for the resolution are slightly different in that:

1. They must be spec-fic (this has not changed).
2. The movie will not be one that is in theaters or that would be part of a Sound Off!
3. They don’t have to be popular – or even something folks have heard about.

But I’ve decided to take my resolution to the next level as well, since I had more than 12 movies on my list that I wanted to see. And since we’re in “Take Two” mode, I might as well up the ante: I will instead be seeing two spec fic movies per month rather than just one. Originally I was going to wait until I transition into vampire-mode for November, but I was too curious to wait. So here’s The Revenant — and no, I am in no way talking about the Leonardo DiCaprio movie. Not even close. The Revenant stars David Anders, who is the reason I’m here, though my arrival is a weird chain-train in general.

This review kept spoiler-free!

I watch Rooster Teeth, who owns a group called Funhaus, who is occasionally visited by the hilarious actor Rahul Kohli, who is on the television show iZombie, and who is the reason I finally decided to give the show a look. From there I got on a massive iZombie kick, binge-watching all three seasons on Netflix in a short period of time, and then the rest directly on the CW site. On the show, David Anders plays Blaine DeBeers, a zombie of ill-repute. The entire time I kept thinking the actor looked familiar and after looking through his IMDB page (where, in the end, I didn’t recognize him from anything), I noticed that he was the main character in The Revenant. I like his character in iZombie, so the idea of seeing him take the main role in something else was intriguing. Initially when I glossed over the summary of The Revenant I thought he was a zombie there as well and found that funny. Except I was wrong.

David plays Bart, an Army soldier we meet while during his deployment to Iraq. About 5 minutes later he takes several bullets to the torso and one to the head. Sucks to be Bart. He’s sent home, popped in a casket, and set to be buried. Except Bart wakes up. He shambles home to his apartment where his roommate Joey (Chris Wylde), after initially freaking out, accepts that Bart is (mostly) alive and tries to help. Unsure whether Bart is a zombie or a vampire, they settle on dubbing him a revenant: one that returns after death. Bart still needs to drink human blood to keep from decomposing, and when in Los Angeles, who better to drink upon than the dregs of society?

Poor Bart; gotta cut open that sew-up mouth.

I would definitely call this movie a dark comedy. Most of the movie is hysterical. I laughed a lot at Bart and Joey’s antics and banter. Joey is an amazing friend, doing everything he can to help Bart survive. For a while it was almost like The Boondock Saints only with vampires instead of righteous God avengers. I felt bad at how often Bart got shot (because getting shot still hurts him), but at least you feel they’re doing the city a favor. Bart usually got shot, often more than once, before taking down the shooter. Poor Bart doesn’t have any idea of what’s happened to him, but maybe this is his new calling. Plus, it comes with a lot of cash and drugs (though he doesn’t partake of those).

Eat your heart out, Boondock Saints.

I like the take on being a vampire here. Sure, they may not be certain in the movie, but since he is strictly drinking blood and he automatically drops dead during sunrise, I’m leaning heavily toward vampire. But he’s far from the traditional type. His eyes retain their milky color throughout the movie and his wounds don’t really heal that much. It made it more interesting than your typical vampire movie, that’s for sure. Though I am admittedly curious as to how he got this way in the first place, since the movie makes it seem as though Bart’s new condition has no explanation. All I can come up with is that there were already vampires in Iraq, they drank him, and then he came back (to life and to the States). Unfortunately, poor Bart doesn’t know, and can only make vague guesses throughout.

Poor Bart. But hey, at least he’s got a good pal like Joey.

The dark part comes in with other elements, such as Bart dealing with his girlfriend Janet (Louise Griffiths), and then the spiral the story takes as you get closer to the end. Complete with a few “Oh shit…okay, that happened,” moments. You wonder — will Bart find peace? But because I was laughing so much early on, I also kept wondering — how was this movie going to end? Would Bart somehow find a way to get better (re: alive)? Would something happen between him and Joey? Was someone else in his life going to become a revenant? I really, truly could not figure out how the end was going to go, which was both exciting (since I find endings so often predictable these days) and worrisome because it just didn’t seem like it would end well.

I won’t spoil it, but boy it was not an ending I ever would have guessed. A small part of me wonders whether the writer really did have an ending in mind, or just lost the thread of what he was going for. I will say that it kind of came out of left field. And the decision made by a certain group seemed rather nonsensical. Consider the phrase, “Do you want ants? Because this is how you get ants,” only replace “ants” with “vampires/zombies.” Or “the apocalypse.” That might work, too.

You really shouldn’t bring a gun to vampire fight.

The acting is pretty spot-on for everyone involved. I really enjoyed David’s skills, which had to run the gamut of cheeky to torn about killing people to the moments when he’s dying/falling apart. There are a few times where I didn’t understand what the heck happened to the special effects; there are some green-screen moments that did not look good. I’m talking really cheap movie not-good. Which really threw me off because David’s makeup was always excellent, among other practical effects. It’s almost as though they had top dollar for practical effects (which I really appreciate), but not enough for a bit of CG-related stuff. Odd.

Oddities aside, go watch it. I had a damned fine time with this movie and if you like comedy mixed with horror mixed with some feels, then I think you’ll dig this flick.

Ooga-booga!

Images courtesy IMDB.com.