...and you thought "2 Girls, 1 Cup" was bad...

If the point or art-- or any aesthetic experience, really-- is to stimulate some reaction within its audience, then Damon Packard's film Reflections of Evil is successful art, indeed. However, from an audience's perspective, I tend to think that art that does nothing beyond work you over for every emotional trigger you've got is really rather base. I would put such things as this most recent generation of slasher films in that category, along with, say, porn. There's nothing really wrong with those types of films, per se... it's just that they're designed to signal your most primal fear instincts or your most primal libidinous instincts, without really engaging your mind. But they do illicit reactions and therefore, it can be argued that they serve their purpose. And, I suppose, so does Packard's film. But I personally can take only minimal satisfaction from a film that goes right for the throat of instinct, bypassing completely my more mental maneuverings.

Sometimes I lose track of the fact that I'm actually a pretty sensitive person. I sit down in front of most movies, immediately don my critic's cap and set to work. As I've said before, I'm not too interested in being entertained just for the sake of entertainment, so I play a game of mining films for their assumptions and underpinnings-- which is something that's a lot more fun to me than just letting them wash over me. But my critical stance does a remarkable job of establishing a certain distance. I have some friends who tell me they don't like to watch movies that are "depressing" or "negative" or disturbing in any way because they take those feelings home with them. I find that I can allow a film to affect me while it's playing, but as soon as the lights come up, this critical stance kicks into gear and works as a filter, such that I can pretty much release the emotional impact without much stress. However, every once in a while, something really scratches-- or in this case, gouges-- its way under my skin. So accustomed to my detachment am I that I'm sometimes surprised when the emotional stuff comes barreling up to the surface.

So, when I erupted into spastic tears on the car ride home from Damon Packard's film last night, I was really caught off guard. That means it's probably high time to figure out what was going on in this film that made me feel so utterly wretched afterwards. No promises that what I have to say will make any sense, though.

There's really no way to give a synopsis as it doesn't have much plot. Basically, it's just relentless footage of this slovenly, derelict fellow with a pillow up his shirt to make him appear even more obesely repulsive. He's wearing 7 or 8 layers of shirts, with some of them tied around his waist or pooling at his feet. He often has food smeared on his face and his hair is wild and greasy. This is, of course, Packard himself, playing a vagrant, paranoid, furious street peddler, trying to sell $5 watches while constantly being assaulted, or assaulting other people. Interspersed, you find footage of a girl wearing a floaty pink nightgown, sometimes wearing a gorilla mask and bleeding from the mouth, and some clips from 70s era TV promos. But for the most part, this watch-seller character interacts with myriad tweaking homeless junkies, angry dogs and other folks who just seem up for a fight. His paranoia mounts rapidly and the steady blue streak of profanity throughout creates nothing short of an onslaught of anxiety. Now, I can handle my fair share of foul language-- it's not the words unto themselves, for sure. But when you sit through nearly two hours of listening to people shout, "I'm gonna kill you, motherfucker," it has a way of invading you.

And speaking of shouted "motherfuckers," that's not the only thing going on in the sound design of this film. Every one of Packard's gestures and movements is accompanied by these awful grunting and crackling bodily sounds. Clearly, it's mean to amplify the sense of his own discomfort within his body. Every time he eats, he's dubbed over the sound with this ravenous animalistic belching noise that really makes the whole thing seem far more disgusting than it really is. There's one scene in which he digs through a series of leftovers in a refrigerator. He finds nothing that's really too gross-- a tub of olives, some wedges of hard cheese, something that might have been meatballs. But he's dubbed in these sloshing, slurping, sucking sounds such that you're pretty convinced you're looking at puddles of putrescence.

And don't get me started on the vomiting. Within about 30 seconds of this film's opening credits, I'd already figured out I'd spend most of it with my head buried in Jon's chest, trying to plug my ears. The prevalence of puke in this film, though... good god. All who know me understand that my anxieties around vomit are not to be taken lightly. I once heard a woman puking in one of the bathroom stalls at work and, forever after, that stall was dead to me. Actually, I felt quite shaky even going into the one next to it. I'm not sure I understand my phobia, but it's pretty real and films that use vomit for comic effect kinda piss me off. It's not funny, beyond the most juvenile of levels and it simply makes me want to bolt from the theater. However, in this film, there was so much vomit and with such frequency that I *almost* became numb to it. Except there was that damn soundtrack. Oh, my god-- the splattering and gagging sounds? So loud? It was inescapable and I felt trapped there, held in statis, for 2 hours, abandoned with nothing but my phobia for company.

So, I don't really think it's possible to watch a film like this and maintain a critical distance. I left the theater feeling totally victimized by and infected with this film's vitriol. I felt like I'd been on the receiving end of every ounce of this man's soul-dumpage. I don't really begrudge him his need to express such things in a creative format, but I'm not real sure I deserved to have it land in my lap. I didn't know what I was getting into when Jon and I chose to see this film. And it probably serves me right for not googling first. I gather the entire thing is available on the internet-- but I'm not going to link it because I really wouldn't wish it on any of my readers. But now, I've seen it and I can't erase those images from my head. Sooner or later, they'll fade a little and be replaced with something else, but right now, they're tormenting me. They're in me and I don't know how to purge them. So I wonder, why did this man want to do such a thing to me? And by "me," I don't really mean me personally, but rather, why would a person feel the need to assault an audience in such a fashion? It's a sort of artist-on-audience aggression that I can't imagine to be all that satisfying for the artist.

It's my fault that I didn't get up and leave, as very quickly, I ascertained that this movie wasn't going to have a positive effect on my psyche. But I still feel like it's unfair that this man created something that I feel helpless against internalizing. In his Q&A, he talked a little about his guerrilla distribution methods. Obviously, this film could never find an actual distributor, so he did stuff like hire homeless people to stand around and hand out copies of the DVD to unsuspecting Los Angelenos. Or he'd leave stacks of them around the city. And he mailed out hundreds of copies to random celebrities. To me, that says that he's pretty invested inflicting his repugnance and fury on other people. And, yeah, it makes me kind of resentful... and it makes me question his fundamental morality. I chose to see this thing and have to admit that I kinda did it to myself, but what about all those people who just slid the thing into the DVD players and got nothing but a load of puke, both metaphoric and literal, right in the face? Did they really deserve it?

Ugh. I give up. I can't really process this movie at all. I feel, perhaps, as though I survived something, but I'm not exactly sure how to handle its lingering effects. All I know is that I want it out of me. But Packard lobbed a demon at me and it's taken hold. Shy of exorcism, it seems I'll be carrying it with me, obsessively, for a bit.

Thanks, dude. I owe ya one.