Based on Aileen Wuornos’s early life, America’s most notorious female serial killer, who went on a killing spree in Florida in 1989 and 1990. What few people know, is that back in 1976 a young...
It’s already been a full month since Ted Bundy so let’s put an end to this goddamn torture: Daniel Farrands back up for round two, this time with Aileen Wuornos in American Boogeywoman. Believe it or not, this is supposed to be a prequel to the 2003 critically acclaimed Monster film with Charlize Theron. The balls on this guy, I know.
Can you tell I’m hardly trying anymore with this guy? Sure, individual aspects of this real life story, I was intrigued about simply just out of pure curiosity but did you really expect this to be good? What did you think?
I am still steaming, STEAMING on how Peyton List went from Cobra Kai to this; such a drastic step down in quality and her performance seems to mirror that downgrade despite a better-than-average outing. Also, Tobin Bell? Really didn’t need to be in this. Neither did Lydia Hearst from Haunting Of Sharon Tate or Swen Temmel or Leslie Stratton, all of whom were either miscast or completely tone-deaf in their staging.
That’s honestly how the vast majority of Farrands’ directing here is: tone deaf. As his on-going trend for four films straight, a severe lack of suspense and drama is only further exasperated by, AGAIN, his selfish desire for trying to justify its egregious embellishment by framing the film as something it’s not and the lack of ANYTHING crucial happening only makes every single fanatical fabrication a damaging betrayal of whatever the truth is. While Boogeyman had a hodgepodge of random scenes masquerading around the ‘theme’ of chasing Bundy, here, it’s another hodgepodge of the same thing just with Aileen losing control.
Set design continues to contemplate the time period this biopic is supposed to be set in and while, production wise, it’s the most technically polished of his previous films in terms of visual value, the camera is still an issue. Luckily, it’s not the heinous, ugly, soulless portraits of what appears on the screen but even without assaulting my vision, the camera is still sometimes shot at the wrong lens frame or just repetitive.
Once again you have meaningless characters, defective, manufactured dialogue, the tone wouldn’t have felt as mismatched as it did if the pacing didn’t crawl to a halt every ten seconds and the soundtrack didn’t sound identical the entire way through and it is aggressively boring.
The scenarios it creates with the younger Aileen are as inaccurate as they are incredulous but at least they come off basic and drab as hell throughout an surprisingly short runtime. But the last 16 minutes, however, delves into the batshit insanity that Farrands is mostly known for. There’s heinous, ugly visuals topped with terrible green-screen and special effects, cheap production values and a blasphemous resolution that continues to rip into the fabric of his fantasy vs. reality paradigm that garnered him his infamy. They could honestly make a Top 10’s list within itself but then I’d have to go back and watch it again to make sure and NO WAY IN HELL AM I PAYING TWICE FOR THIS SHIT!
If Boogeyman was his guide on how to take suffering and personal loss to make a bootleg Halloween sequel, then Boogeywoman was one meant take that same suffering to explain a burgeoning evil and inspire a noir-like take on troublemaking….BOTH OF WHICH are a colossal waste of time. Am I even supposed to believe this is a prequel after all of that? What balls do you get in trying to sell the basis of an entire movie on a promise you KNEW you couldn’t live up to?!
