November 25th, 2015 - Shocker (1989)

I feel like Shocker has gotten a little extra play as of late, given the recent passing of writer/director Wes Craven. It's a surprisingly light flick, considering the big bad is a serial killer (Horace Pinker) who massacres entire families! Usually, slashers just kill off teens or (shitty) single people/couples. Because knocking off an entire family is kind of depressing. And actually, Pinker is a serial killer until he's executed. At which point, using some sort of occult spell/black magic, he manifests into some sort of ghost/spirit who can jump either (a) from body to body, possessing the person, or (b) into the TV (?). It's interesting… Shocker starts out pretty grim, and progressively gets zanier until the big climax, which plays more like a comedy than anything else. So, even though it's a little on the long side, at least Shocker is never boring. 

Is it good? Eh... I mean, it's entertaining for sure, but I think I kind of expected more considering it's a Wes Craven joint - and also considering all of the love I've heard for it over the years. Granted, it's a love that often comes with an asterisk, but still. The tone is just kind of all over the place, and it never really cohered into anything that made enough sense for me to enjoy on anything other than a superficial level. Although there could be love for it because of how insane it is... and I kind of get that. But overall it just never clicked for me.

Anyways, here's Shocker: Horace Pinker is a cable repair man/occultist/mass murderer. His M.O. is to get into houses by virtue of his trustworthy TV repair man outfit and murder entire families. Because that's what killers do. That's my guess at least - thankfully you never see a full on family killing. I assume Craven knew that may be a bit much. At any rate, the police are baffled and Pinker leaves no trace.

Meanwhile, college (I think?) Football star Jonathan (Peter Berg - future director of Battleship - Hollywood is a strange place sometimes) takes a big hit in practice courtesy of the field goal post. Nowadays, we would be worried about concussions, but in Jonathan's case, he establishes a psychic link with murder Pinker. Later that night, Jonathan has a nightmare about Pinker killing his family. And it turns out to be true! Jonathan's dad also happens to be a police inspector, and even though he's skeptical of Jonathan's story, he goes along with it and they try to apprehend Pinker using Jonathan's psychic-ness. After a couple of (bloody) attempts, they nab Pinker and sentence him to death by electric chair. All good, right?

Wrong! Pinker is into black magic, and does some weird ritualistic business prior to being executed. Turns out, the electricity only makes him stronger. Now he can hop from body to body, or even (kind of) manifest himself as a ghost-like thing. How? Other than "occult ritual", Shocker really even try to explain.  And Jonathan is really the only one to figure this out... so the hunt is on. Jonathan wants to stop Pinker from continuing his killing spree from (sort of) beyond the grave, and Pinker wouldn't mind getting a little revenge on the punk kid who helped him get busted.

It's worth mentioning at this point that Shocker takes its sweet time getting... well anywhere, really. At nearly 2 hours, it seems waytoo long for a late 80s goofy horror jam, but honestly it never really drags. The first 45 or so minutes play like a gory psychic procedural, the next 30 or so a weird body jumping horror flick, and then it ends as a kind of goofy ghost movie. So even though it's a long film, it goes through enough different phases that it never really seems slow or too boring. In a strange way, it's almost like getting three movies in one.

The big problem with that is that the tones never really mesh all that well. It's hard to balance cartoonish action (the finale) with brutal family murdering, and the end result is that you just kind of end up lost as a viewer. You never really get a good footing on just what you're watching... once you kind of settle in, it switches on you. In some films, that off-balanceness can help build tension, but Shocker is just a little too goofy for that to work.

Horror-wise? It's pretty darned bloody actually - of course Wes Craven isn't averse to some gore. A lot of that here is in "after-the-fact style" - you don't witness an awful lot of the actual slashings. But it's also kind of mean-spirited. You've got the whole family murdering thing going on, and a lot of people close to Jonathan get gruesomely murdered. Which is fine, but when some of the film is going for comedy it just seems... weird? And it sort of undercuts the tension that could be happening. But I suspect that's the film that Craven wanted to make. You don't have the spirit of Pinker possess a little girl, and then make her say "fuck" a lot and ultimately try to run over Jonathan with a bulldozer unless you're trying to make at least a partial comedy.

But it obviously works like gangbusters for some people. Shocker has quite the devoted following, and tonal issues aside, I can see why. It's a good looking, decently acted, well shot, and entertaining film, and at the very least, it's unique.  While I am not totally in the "I Love It" camp, it's still a pretty good time.

I would   recommend   this film