Crush (1992) from Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski)

It's an odd film almost from the first moments. A literary critic from New Zealand and her American friend (Marcia Gay Harden) drive through a picturesque part of the North Island, on their way to interview a Kiwi author who is a Booker Prize winner. The two women discuss the fact that the interview may go poorly because this author is notoriously hard on critics, and she has written some harsh words about him. The American spots an odd roadside attraction which causes her to takes her eyes from the road long enough to cause a terrible accident. The New Zealander's body is mangled and appears to have died in the crash, but the American is only dazed, so she does what I think any of us would have done in this case. Instead of calling for emergency assistance, she makes her way to the author's house and pretends to be the critic - without even changing her American accent! This author is apparently not the brightest guy in the world, because he buys the impersonation hook, line and sinker.

The American is soon seducing the author, which doesn't go down well with his daughter, who kinda thought the American was hitting on her first! Meanwhile, it turns out that the real critic was not killed in the crash, but her body and mind were both badly damaged. When the daughter figures out precisely what is going on, she goes to the hospital, befriends the injured critic, and begins programming her for a recovery that includes revenge against the controlling American.

And so forth.

The daughter was really only planning to turn her father against the American, but it turns out that the injured critic is capable of far more insidious types of revenge than anyone could have imagined after seeing her damaged body. I think. Or maybe it was all a dream.

The film has a great look to it. It was shot near the town of Rotorua, a tourist mecca because of its unusual natural wonders like dramatic waterfalls, geysers, hot mud pools, thermal springs, ancient villages buried by volcanoes, Maori cultural artifacts, and tropical rainforests. It's an especially useful setting for an eerie movie because it appears that sunshine has never touched the place at any time. I once explained my Upstate New York birthplace to an ex-girlfriend of mine by saying that our local dialect doesn't even have a word for "sun." Rotorua is that kind of place - misty, foggy, and perennially overcast. It is made even more sinister by a surfeit of touristy hotels, motels, and shops which vie for the tourist dollars.

If films were entirely about pictures, thus film might have won some major awards, but they aren't, at least not since 1929, and Crush's words aren't as strong as the pictures. The script is laden with heavy-handed literary tropes. For example, the American's impersonation of the New Zealander is foreshadowed clumsily by a scene in which they eat chicken together before the accident and the critic asks her future impersonator, "Do you want my skin?" (She does. Literally and figuratively.) At least that device worked on the real level as well as the symbolic. Too many elements of the film exist on a figurative plane without attempting to make sense in the story's primary reality. One minute the two women are in the crash. The American gets up and walks. Then almost instantly the American is at the author's house, again taking the critic's "skin." WTF? Apparently the scenarist thought no more explanations were necessary. As for the ending ... well, I think I know what happened. Or not. Hard to say. Quirky editing.

In addition to the confusing script, the film is burdened by the fact that Marcia Gay Harden isn't especially convincing as the manipulative and malevolent seductress. This is another effort from her ill-fated "sexy seductress phase" in the early 90s. (See our review of Fever.) In this film she looks less like a femme fatale than a middle-class suburban housewife who watches Oprah every day and wants to shed a few pounds. You can tell that the script must have been written by a woman, because no man would conceive of this character as mysteriously seductive. She's obnoxious, a sloppy drunk, a messy eater, and she talks too much. She doesn't even shut up during sex.

Bottom line: Crush has some merit, especially in the visuals, but it's just trapped somewhere between the world of psychological horror films and the world of hand-wringing arthouse melodramas, and it never really settles into either groove.