The Shudder Pick of the Month is the Satirical 2020 Dark Horror Comedy Spree
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My Shudder pick of the month is the 2020 satirical horror comedy Spree. I chose it because it's analogous to a fascinating sub-subgenre within the larger world of American movies about filmmaking I discovered while writing and researching The Fractured Mirror, my massive upcoming book on the subject that takes the kill-or-be-killed aspect of show-business and capitalism literally.
In these dark comedies, making it in the motion picture is murder. In The Fractured Mirror, I write about a slew of cynical horror-comedies where the path to cinematic success is greased with the blood of the innocent, or at least semi-innocent.
In Spree, which was executive producer by problematic rapper Drake, who knows a little something about the dark side of fame and social media, Stranger Things' Joe Keery plays Kurt Kunkle, an earnest young rideshare driver who, like the homicidal strivers of The Fractured Mirror, will do anything to make it, including spree killing.
Kurt has trying desperately to make it as an influencer for a solid decade with nothing to show for it but shattered dreams, desperation and an online audience in the single digits. His failure stands in sharp contrast to the runaway success of a much more successful influencer he used to babysit, who found fame and fortune cranking out bottom-feeding videos pranking the homeless, a demographic that we can all agree needs to be taken down a notch.
The hapless young criminal calls his livestream The Lesson. The idea is that he is showing his audience how to build an audience by example. He's essentially trying to teach his handful of die-hard followers something that he himself does not know how to do. The rubberneckers watching his livestream serve as a demon on his shoulder, perpetually admonishing him to give into his darkest instincts and give the people what they really want: a livestream that veers into snuff film territory, a livestream about transforming passengers into dead bodies for the sake of views, clicks and the ultimate goal of going viral by any means necessary.
The younger man's videos are sleazy and amoral but they do not quite qualify as evil. The same cannot be said of Kurt's bold plan to break out of the sad little world of online anonymity by live-streaming his murders of strangers with the bad luck to request a ride from him.
Kurt uses poison in his bid to score an impressive body count. That's a method historically prefered by women in part because it is effective but also relatively low-key. In contrast to the bloody spectacle of stabbing or shooting, poisoning results in the poisoned feeling unwell and then keeling over dead.
Keery, who I know primarily from his performance as a fictionalized version of himself in the post-modern Pavement documentary Pavements, which you can read about in, you guessed it, The Fractured Mirror, makes his misguided protagonist far more likable than a wannabe influencer has any right to be.
Mass murderers are arguably even worse than obnoxious schemers chasing online fame but Kurt initially cuts a surprisingly amiable figure. It does not hurt that his first customers/rides/victims are loathsome louts who don't necessarily deserve to die, but they don't particularly deserve to live either.
The first passenger to make the mistake of accepting a poisoned water bottle is a loud and proud racist who tries to recruit his driver by appealing to his driver's whiteness and sense of racial resentment.
His quick, clean demise is not a cause for tears, though it is not clear whether he repulses Kurt for moral reasons or because he's worried that overt racism will prevent him from gaining more followers.
That is true of his next victim as well, a horny bro and fellow wannabe influencer who perishes after awkwardly hitting on profoundly uninterested African-American stand-up comedy Jessie Adams (Sasheer Zamata)
The ambitious stand-up narrowly escapes death by poisoned water bottle. She fascinates our protagonist/anti-hero/villain because she has a lot of folllowers and a strong online fanbase, which is all that matters in his world, but also because she is genuinely creative. She owes her modest but growing fame to her work as a comedian. She has an art form she works hard at refining even if she's hyper-aware of how she's being perceived by an anonymous audience that can be her best friend, worst enemy, or combination of the two.
Kurt is not an artist. He does not have an art form. He's an opportunist who dreams of achieving fame and success without having to do anything to earn them. He's been working very hard at trying not to have to work hard for a very long time, and is frustrated that his lack of effort has not gotten him farther.
Spree's main character is a content creator whose content invariably bombs. So he resorts to the ultimate shock tactic: cold-blooded murder. Even that fails to move the needle, metaphorically speaking. His tiny audience doesn't believe that they're witnessing genuine death rather than a cheap appropriation.
A frustrated Kurt decides to up the ante. It's not enough to kill people for the delight of invisible voyeurs who may or may not believe what they're watching. So he decides to up his game and start killing in more gruesome, creative and graphic ways.
His jealousy toward Jesse takes on a homicidal dimension. She's blowing up thanks to edgy humor and cynical catchphrase. If Kurt can't become famous for as a content creator then maybe he can become infamous for destroying the lives of people more talented and successful than himself.
It seems strange to state that Kurt becomes a much darker, more nihilistic and violent figure over the course of his misadventures in new media-friendly murder considering he begins the film not just ready but eager to kill strangers for clout and clicks. Yet as a bloody endgame approaches, Kurt loses what little is left of his moral compass and throws himself into killing as many people as possible as both a means to achieve fame and revenge for a life full of disappointment, rejection and shattered dreams.
Kurt grows more careless in his killing. He attains instant notoriety as the Rideshare Killer. That's not jusr a catchy and appropriate nickname; it's also good branding. He wants what Jessie has—an audience, fame, a promising future, some degree of talent—and is willing to kill her, and anyone who gets in the way to have it.
Spree is analogous to the movies about amoral strivers willing to kill for cinematic fame that I write about in The Fractured Mirror in that it shifts from being a satirical dark comedy about the amorality and distorted values of our fame, success, and money-obsessed capitalist society into a horror movie about a blood-splattered lunatic who kills reflexively.
Also like the movies about the literal kill-or-be-killed nature of Hollywood fame I write about in The Fractured Mirror, this is more successful as a bleak comedy than as a fright flick, but it closes with a particularly successful and scathing version of what I like to think of as the Taxi Driver ending, with someone horrible and insane acquiring unmerited fame after committing unforgivable crimes.
In Spree, Kurt becomes an Eliot Rodger-like hero to extremely online incels who see something of themselves and their own ugliness in his grim final day and night and Jessie rocketing to stardom due to her melodramatic tale of survival against impossible odds as well as her talent and charisma.
Spree is a film of facile but real pleasures fueled by engaging performances by Keery and Zamata. It doesn't necessarily have anything new or revelatory to say about our crazy-making online world, but it's a breezy and engaging dark comedy with a serrated satirical edge.
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