Shudder's Destroy All Neighbors is a Goofy, Gory Delight
Welcome, friends, to the latest entry in Control Nathan Rabin 4.0. It’s the career and site-sustaining column that gives YOU, the kindly, Christ-like, unbelievably sexy Nathan Rabin’s Happy Place patron, an opportunity to choose a movie that I must watch and then write about in exchange for a one-time, one hundred dollar pledge to the site’s Patreon account. The price goes down to seventy-five dollars for all subsequent choices.
Welcome, friends, to the latest new development in the world of Control Nathan Rabin 4.0. The kind patron who commissioned my Stuart Gordon series has chosen to follow it up with one where I choose a different random movie from Shudder every month to write about.
I am a big horror buff. I’m familiar with all the famous monsters and slashers, including Corey from Halloween Ends, arguably the greatest film ever made. Its only competition is Mank.
So don’t be surprised if Halloween Ends and Mank top the next Cahiers du Cinéma poll of the greatest films of all time.
Since Shudder is the top horror streaming service, I am very excited about this new journey. I was hoping to draw a connection between the Stuart Gordon series, my new journey, and the dental issues that are dominating my life and finances right now by kicking off with the Stuart Gordon-co-written shocker The Dentist.
Unfortunately, The Dentist is not on Shudder—yet. Maybe if we all call the brass at Shudder at home at all hours of the night angrily demanding that they add The Dentist to their roster, that will change.
While it does not have The Dentist or its sequel, 1998 follow-up The Dentist 2, which has a generic title but has a trio of awesome subtitles in The Dentist 2: Brace Yourself, D2: Without Novacaine and The Dentist 2: You Know the Drill Shudder has plenty of terrific movies like the recently released horror comedy Destroy All Neighbors.
I’ve been reading about Destroy All Neighbors on social media, and it looked exactly like the kind of thing I enjoy. It does not hurt that cast members Jonah Ray Rodrigues, Thomas Lennon, and Alex Winter all contributed blurbs for my book The Weird Accordion to Al.
The movie also features a funny cameo from Kumail Nanjani, the original host of An Evening with Nathan Rabin at the Nerdmelt back in 2013 before he realized that he was way too famous for the gig and was replaced by the awesome but less famous Kurt Braunholer, and Jon Daly, who was on the same episode of The Best Show with Tom Scharpling that I was.
Now I’m dropping names almost constantly; that’s what “Weird Al” Yankovic keeps telling me.
I probably would not write up Destroy All Neighbors if I didn’t like it. Thankfully, it seems like the kind of thing that I would really dig because I, in fact, do dig it.
Rodrigues is all too relatable as William Brown, a milquetoast musician biding his time working as an engineer for a sleazy opportunist played by a scene-stealing Thomas Lennon.
William is passionate about writing, performing, and recording his own brand of prog rock, but he has a seemingly insurmountable mental block that keeps him from ever satisfactorily finishing what he’s started.
I know the feeling. For the last two and a half years, I have been working obsessively on The Fractured Mirror, my upcoming book about movies about filmmaking, and have finished 99.8 percent of it, but there’s an awful mental block keeping me from doing the last tiny bit necessary.
Maybe by mentioning it here, I can shame myself into doing what needs to be done.
William soon has problems beyond an asshole boss perpetually willing to hurl him under the bus for the slightest of reasons and a girlfriend who is getting tired of his bullshit.
The frustrated artist’s life changes dramatically and for the worse when a man-monster named Vlad moves in next to him and transforms his sideways existence into a waking nightmare.
Alex Winter plays Vlad under so many layers of makeup and latex that he’s completely unrecognizable. Destroy All Neighbors is wonderful old-school in almost all respects, particularly its reliance on make-up, practical effects, and puppetry rather than soulless CGI.
Winter hasn’t done much acting in the last few decades. He’s concentrated instead on directing but he is a devilish delight as an EDM-loving ogre with an unplaceable European accident.
The Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure star is clearly having a ball, disappearing completely inside the kind of unforgettable monster you can't help but want to murder. Vlad has a face that even a mother couldn’t love and a personality as ugly and abrasive as his looks.
Vlad wages an aggressive assault on his neighbor’s sanity by blasting loud electronic music and making weird, sinister sounds.
The conflict-averse neurotic finally musters up the courage to personally ask Vlad to turn it down. This leads to an altercation and Vlad’s grisly, if accidental, demise.
I was briefly bummed by the seeming end of such a raging hurricane of a character/performance, but in the wild, wacky, and weird world of Destroy All Neighbors, death is not an end. It barely slows Vlad down.
It takes more than a grisly death and decapitation to keep Vlad from being obnoxious. Despite being dead, Vlad proves awful lively. He keeps on yammering away despite his head and body being inconveniently and permanently separated.
William tries to get rid of the body in a way that will keep it from being his constant, unwanted companion. Instead, he ends up accidentally killing a scraggly beggar who asks him for a croissant every day.
Destroy All Neighbors is full of wonderful little moments, like when William is screaming with rage towards a man who will be dead soon but still remembers to refer to him as “unhoused” as opposed to the more offensive “homeless.”
In another, a fussy neighbor understandably known around the building for his porcine companions responds angrily to being referred to as “the pig guy” with an indignant, hilariously deadpan: “My emotional support pigs do not define me.”
Then something unexpected happens. The neighbors he has accidentally killed stop tormenting him and start partying and hanging out. Through a series of unfortunate accidents William has somehow assembled something of a posthumous posse.
They eventually evolve into something even weirder: the ramshackle instant group he needs to finish his self-indulgent musical masterpiece.
Destroy All Neighbors has all the right inspirations. It’s rooted in body horror comedies of the 1980s, such as Evil Dead 2 and The Re-Animator, as well as the early works of Peter Jackson and Frank Henlotter.
It’s a retro delight that finds the perfect balance of comedy and horror, goofiness and gore.
At eighty-five well-paced, laugh-packed minutes, Destroy All Neighbors doesn’t have time to wear out its welcome.
Though it was distributed by Shudder, Destroy All Neighbors is available on plenty of other streaming services. However, I recommend watching it on Shudder because it perfectly captures the streaming service's simultaneously reverent and irreverent sensibility. Having Shudder will also allow you to play along with this column-within-a-column in the months and years ahead.
Join the movement and contribute to the Gofundme to get my new, permanent teeth that work over at https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-nathans-journey-to-dental-implants
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