Halfway through the end credits of Tusk, a snippet of the podcast, which inspired the film, and director Kevin Smith and producer Scott Mosier recap the climactic moments of the film. I don’t bring this up as a means of adding my voice to the din of people bemoaning the basis for the film – there have been and will continue to be far worse sources on which film properties have been based than a podcast. What feels instructive, however, is how flippantly they recount what is ostensibly the film’s most pathos-infused moments. Filmmaking rarely works when the people in charge bracket the story they’re telling in air quotes, and that sense that you’re meant to be laughing at the movie instead of with it creates a distance through the whole viewing experience. Even with these problems, it’s still easily the best thing Smith has crafted in nearly a decade, thanks to an inspired performance and a few memorable images.
The premise is certainly one of the most interesting ones Smith has dealt with in his career. Podcaster Wallace Bryton (Justin Long) travels from his LA home and girlfriend (Genesis Rodriguez) to Canada in order to interview the subject of a viral video, only to find that he had killed himself out of humiliation. Wallace and his co-host Teddy’s (played by Haley Joel Osment) very popular program is called The Not-See Party, a show whose premise involves Wallace seeing and describing things to Teddy who has not seen them (every glimpse we gather of this show in action is agony). His previous plans having fallen through, Wallace happens upon a bathroom stall advertisement suggesting tales of adventure to any potential lodger and sees the opportunity for exploitation. He ventures to a secluded mansion inhabited by the eccentric Howard Howe (Michael Parks) who plies him with tea and tales of his sea-faring life, only for Wallace to find himself, drugged, kidnapped and immobilized as Howe reveals his ultimate goal – to transform Wallace into walrus in an effort to recreate the only true friend Howe ever made when he was lost at sea, the eponymous Mr. Tusk.
If this film works at all (and it mostly doesn’t), it’s all due in part to Michael Parks whole-hog commitment to the Howard Howe character. Smith once again scribes florid monologues for Parks that would prove cumbersome in lesser hands that the actor instead imbues with poetic rhythm (for an example of this penchant for monologues not working, look at a Genesis Rodriguez speech earlier in the film that feels almost schizophrenically disconnected from everything that surrounds it). Parks is never better than when his tales of adventure spin a web almost as hypnotic as the roofie’d tea he supplies Long’s character early on in the film. It’s a testament to Parks’ ability that he constantly demands your attention, grounding this absurd character and situation in easily identifiable emotion. Much less successful is Long, who despite a long career of playing moderately appealing everymen, is given very little to work with here. You can get away with populating your horror tale with assholes when you’re meant to root for the villain to harshly dispatch with them (it’s the slasher genre’s bread and butter), but Tusk seems determined to make us feel sympathy for Wallace’s plight, despite having him behave like a monster literally every moment before he’s taken captive. It creates the unfortunate imbalance of being dazzled by Parks and repelled by Long in almost every scene, bringing us back to that near-constant disconnect.
And while Smith has put Parks to much better use here (and appears invigorated for short stretches, crafting the most memorable imagery of his career), he still runs aground when trying to combine his brand of comedy with the trappings of horror. Red State featured a denouement chock-full of standard blue dialogue that felt as though it was attached to that film with a ratchet gun given the grim seriousness that precedes it. You can even go all the way back to Jersey Girl and a bawdy masturbation conversation contained therein to see how uneasily his sensibilities coexist alongside any genre other than straight comedy. The overriding sensation is that of a relay race where comedy briefly runs with the baton, then passes it to horror, then passes it back, and so on and so forth.
Never is this more obvious than when the film absolutely grinds to a halt in order to introduce a new character over an hour into the proceedings, the bumbling Quebecois private investigator Guy LaPointe. The film’s promotional materials and credits take special care to not spoil this actor’s identity so I won’t do so here, but the performance is an insane caricature that makes no efforts to blend in with its surroundings (a flashback sequence pitting him against Michael Parks could almost be considered a bold experiment in anti-comedy it is so ill-conceived). Perhaps if the LaPointe character was more properly integrated into the movie, a rhythm could’ve been established, but as it stands we’re subjected to a movie that proves more shambling a monster than it could’ve ever hoped to contain. I only wish I could’ve been half as amused as Smith appears to be as those end credits roll.
