Kevin Smith’s “Tusk” is a bizarre, twisted movie. There are disturbing images in it that will remain seared into one’s memory for months to come. It’s a horror comedy: a cross between an abduction/torture picture and an R-rated guy comedy.
But weirdness can only take a film so far, even a horror movie. The rest of it is admittedly weak and insignificant.
The picture is set in Canada, where Howard Howe (Michael Parks) lives. He’s a crazy, old seafarer who had an encounter many years ago that he’s never quite gotten over. This is why he abducts comedy podcaster Wallace (Justin Long).
Besides Howe, the characters are either obnoxiously written or virtually nonexistent. Wallace is a big jerk who spends the first 20 or so minutes doing nothing but running his mouth. He only draws sympathy because of the treatment he goes through later on shouldn’t happen to anyone; otherwise, he’s completely unlikable.
Meanwhile, Wallace’s girlfriend, Ally (Genesis Rodriguez), and his podcasting partner, Teddy (Haley Joel Osment), figure so prominently in the last third of the movie but hardly make any impression.
And then there’s Johnny Depp — sporting an accent that sounds like a cross between Swedish and Canadian — as Guy LaPointe, an ex-cop who knows all about Howe. He’s eccentric just for the sake of being eccentric. The character is absolutely superfluous to the plot, and yet he’s given a lengthy scene in which he delivers a never-ending monologue explaining an encounter he had with Howe
Howe is the only interesting, fully developed character, and Parks does a fine job. But even his performance — initially mysterious and sinister — turns into a series of bloated, misanthropic diatribes.
Smith’s pacing is extremely sluggish. The picture is full of dialogue-heavy interactions that feel improvised and don’t propel the story forward.
Eventually, “Tusk” just runs out of juice. Smith’s screenplay doesn’t have enough suspense and tension to sustain the movie’s 102-minute run time.
“Tusk” feels like a personal project of Smith’s: It was conceived on his own podcast, in fact. However, Smith doesn’t have enough material to warrant a full-length feature. What begins as intriguing quickly turns into a chatty, unfunny bore.