Two millennials make quick money by leasing incredible New York City apartments they don’t own to people who don’t know they are being scammed. The con works brilliantly until they run into an...
Even as someone who never saw a single Saw film aside from a few clips in passing (and this is the same someone who was crushed by Martyrs), I could tell a shallow attempt at riding the bandwagon of a popular franchise from several stories high and for being a maximalist love letter in disguise, “Twisted” actually seemed poised to surprise me….
….and then the good will kinda got lost.
I’m of two minds on Darren Lynn Bousman’s overall approach to directing this. Whether it be pride or confidence, he shapes everything like a scientist experimenting with proof of concept before upgrading to proof of content; he intended for everything to be as invasive, confrontational, and disruptive as possible under a tidal wave of surpluses and is successful only for brief flashes. But it's that same surplus that creates an utterly numbing experience, and not the good kind; the kind where the stimuli blurs together and left me numb.
What really stood out from this was how little this supposed lurid chamber horror fully emphasizes that claustrophobic vibe with Anthony Stabley’s production design. As promising as it all looks, it just comes off as extraneous window dressing when it’s all said and done; between the repetitive sweeping city landscaping shots that only serve to facilitate the passage of time and the otherwise bureaucratical undertones it so clearly wants to project, that feeling of congestion doesn’t carry over to the actual locations used. Put it simply, I just don’t think Anthony made good use of the space for what’s meant to be a macabre, chromatic descent into inevitable barbarism the unnaturality of this atmosphere doesn’t help with the narrowness of what’s supposed to be the bustling city I was born and raised in.
The entire presentation screams of an giallo picture homage, one where the emphasis and exaggerated luxuries of discomfort and indulgence is meant to enhance the pictures vibrancy and the hybrid clashing of genres rather than sitting comfortably in a single lane does give the feature some elasticity and longevity; something Bella Gonzales’s moody cinematography can attest to. Now I won’t say it doesn’t pertain a quarter of the atmosphere that the film desperately wants to glaze us in but there’s a blunt clarity to how tactile and heavy the camera feels and the visuals she displays go through the whole kit’n’kaboodle: slanted or tilted framing, Dutch angles, Giallo rainbow-colored lighting, and lensing that slowly breaks down and warps like it’s in declining health; very Italian and retro neo-noir styled in equal measure.
Don’t even get me started on the music video-esque editing; Zeborah Tidwell faints like it’s posing for no stability, only to bounce back to grasp it like both an intruder and observer.
Props must go to the pacing because of how concise and persistent it is; barreling ahead with a full head of steam that supplies brief spurts of momentum and electricity and cutting off most of the excess fat means its rhythm and flow are never bloated with a tight 93 minute runtime that bolsters the standard fare….but that very excess occasionally stifles said speed because it acts like it’s never allowed to stop moving. Visual effects push credulity if you stop to think about it (which I did), tension hits this weird diluted stasis to where it keeps teasing but never really gets out of fifth gear and Gina Ruiz’s costume design has splices of color-coding ingenuity but its not enough to wholly stand out. Now the nihilistic tone is where the rug keeps getting pulled out from underneath me; sometimes the luxuriating discomfort and indulgent overstimulation of constant scumminess feels intentional and plays more to the movies core ideas and strengths (however many there are). Other times, it plays out as exploitative and what’s meant to feel like controlled dread slips away and ever so briefly dives into camp (I think).
Something about Mark Sayfritz’s elegant classical score mixed with this clock-tick driven template drove me mad due to how much I liked it; the ludonarrative dissonance of it being played against intense moments, gory bloodfests or the otherwise more traditional synth-driven score felt like a sick joke but it somehow works. While I wouldn’t say the sound design entirely captures the low-hum vacancy of despair, it has enough understanding of weaponizing silence and stillness to compliment the unorthodox nature of this soundtrack and my god, the execution of its R-rating; yes, sure, it lives up to the boundaries set from its MMPA rating but there’s such an artificiality to all the blood spraying and the way it’s executed that it borders on cartoonish and it took me out of certain moments.
That being said, I appreciate the film not turning pain into spectacle or sexualizing trauma even when tempted by its worst impulses.
Another thing I’ll give credit where credit is due: the acting is actually pretty solid. Everybody delivers an above-average performance but unfortunately, they need to grapple with middling dialogue and every character here is either prosaic, vapid or just a straight-up piece of shit; seriously, the script feels like it’s going out of its way to give everyone some kind of deplorable or nasty layer. Dr. Kezian already has enough nuclear baggage to where he shouldn’t be allowed to succeed but the main protagonist Paloma doesn’t do herself any favors either and that’s not even going into the entire conditioning of her relationship with Smith to where it’s only there for male gaze titillation and masturbatory purposes. Yes, I’m aware it’s meant to highlight the unpleasantness behind that male gaze in a story focused around bodily autonomy, especially surrounding a queer character, but the execution feels cruel.
Only Kezian and Paloma feel the closest to being actual characters (the former let his genius rots into madness in a bid to save someone he can’t accept is gone and the latter is deeply resourceful to where she never comes off as passive even when stripped of power) and it helps that Djimon Hounsou and Laura LaVera are fiercely dedicated but as decent as the rest of the cast is, they can’t pick up the slack.
When you’re putting together a story about many people trying to outsmart and con each other in some way, something has to give and to give the story some credit, Jonathan Bernstein and James Greer’s dedication to try and refuse to sand anything down is something I can respect them for. The DNA of your prototypical Saw film is here and accounted for but instead of a puppet ridding a tricycle intent on making people fight for their lives to make them appreciate it and right whatever wrongs they’ve done, you got a surgeon twisted by grief and brilliance scrambling identities under the dangerous belief that progress justifies any cost to save someone he once lost. It has—not all the makings—but enough grittiness and high concept philosophical layering to stand out as this messy, violent examination of the human condition, staged through the fantasy of precision through multiple unreliable narrators. You’d think with a title like Twisted, they’d go all the way with these gritty flourishes….
…but instead, it comes off rather tame.
For every two to three scenes that actually are surprising, the rest go exactly down the avenue you expect it to while circling around clichéd emotional beats, repetitive pit-stops, half-baked formalism and plot twists implemented without a strong sense of precision. Even with the fun subversion to the "Criminal cons the WRONG GUY" which is such a dime-a-dozen horror premise, the entire project inevitably flatlines trying to center all its supposed ambition around this flailing execution that reeks of meandering with no morality, no rest and no compass, effectively watering-down every central detail we follow. Withholding that moral compass should’ve pushed me to re-check my own biases on survival and the idea of sympathy for people such as this but the story never allows itself to moralize anything to give me the opportunity to linger on that. There are no clear narrative signposts either, which normally wouldn’t bother me due to the intent of ambiguity being clear, but when the film wants me to take everything at face value when there’s barely any weight behind them, I’m going to call it out. Everything just feels cold, alienating, foreign, which I understand is meant to be the point….but at what cost?
So much of this film wrestles with how the fragility of identity ties back into control and grief shaping your every decision on top of
the grifting house scheme at the beginning playing like a jab at the gig economy (everything, even your identity, becomes product and pricey), the bureaucratic red-tape limitations of rules oversight acting as institutional stagnation, the reflection of contemporary anxiety around perception, emotional manipulation and what can be argued as truth and I know there’s more I’m missing. But again, because of all these ideas, themes and residual think-pieces are either overextended or pile up so quickly and carelessly before the movie even gives itself the chance to explore them, the film can’t construct a cohesive identity on its own. If anything, the visuals do most of the heavy lifting while the actual script gets placed on the back burner.
It’s not that it has no shame, it’s just that the damn thing requires you to be very patient and attentive without actually rewarding your investment even without holding your hand.
Between this and Terrifier, though, Laura LaVera is only one or two good scripts away from rocketing into the stratosphere…..and I’ll be looking forward to when she does.
