With the current issue of bullying going on within our
schools, Death & Cremation is a relevant watch. While it’s not the first
movie to be made about bullied teens taking revenge on their adversaries,
it’s the first to be made following the rash of unfortunate suicides that have
occurred over the last sixteen months. It’s certainly the first to feature a
bullied teen taking his murderous cues from a local nutball who he happens to
know has taken a few lives of his own. It’s this aspect that sets the film off
from others of its ilk. A cinematic soul mate of sorts to Apt Pupil, Death
& Cremation explores the very unusual relationship between a high school
kid and a local mortician named Stanley.
Jarod (Frailty’s all-grown-up Jeremy Sumpter) is an oddball,
Gothed-out high school student who just wants to be left alone. Life by day is
rife with bullies and bitchy girls, and by night his prison-like trailer-home
doesn’t allow for the type of privacy he would prefer. With his father gone (if
dead or deadbeat, this is never explained), and his mother bringing home all
manner of dorks to date, it’s safe to say that life sucks for Jarod. He’s an
introverted student, prepared to plant himself down on the field and read
during gym class while his fellow students participate. Naturally it’s this
kind of behavior that causes several of the jocks to bully Jarod, throwing food
and rocks at him throughout the day.
Stanley (Brad Dourif) doesn’t fare much better. Though a
serial killer who at random bludgeons his victims to death, it’s clear he
doesn’t receive much respect either. In fact, when a married couple comes into
his funeral home to see about the possibility of embalming a recently diseased
member of the family (to which Stanley declines, explaining he only cremates),
their teen daughter calls him a fag for seemingly no reason. Coincidentally,
this same girl was part of a gaggle of other jocks known for bulling Jarod. It
doesn’t take long before Stanley visits the bitchy girl with a sledgehammer,
and Jarod notices she has gone missing.
One day, when Jarod sets off to find himself an after-school
job, he randomly wanders into Stanley’s funeral home to see about possible
employment. Stanley very hesitantly agrees, and one day Jarod finds himself in
the basement where unending shelves of unclaimed ashes sit abandoned and sees
an urn off by itself with the initials L.W.—initials of the bullying girl
recently reported missing. Jarod
puts two and two together, but he becomes neither horrified nor excited. But he
does become Stanley’s friend.
Their friendship soon transcends that of one into mutual
understanding…especially when Jarod begins to accumulate bodies of his own.
There is a lot to like in Death & Cremation. The
handling of the material alone shows that director/co-writer Justin Steele took
the concept seriously, although at some points it’s difficult to discern if
certain set pieces were aiming for dark humor as opposed to merely mishandled. But
these moments are few and far between. For most of the ride, it’s ghastly and
gory, but unfortunately it never quite reaches that level of “touching” the
film was going for. The main selling point of the film is between Stanley and
Jarod. It’s among the most unorthodox friendship trope you’ll see in films like
this, but it wasn’t given as much attention as it should have been. There’s
never that “ah-ha!” moment where Stanley realizes that Jarod knows of his
murderous lifestyle—the potential for an incredibly dramatic moment laid in
waiting, but it just never came to fruition. The realization of Stanley’s serial killer
life, and of Jarod’s complete acceptance of it, should have been one not just more present, but present in general. And
so, because of this, the power of their relationship did not reach the heights
it could have.
I love movies about uneasy alliances. Apt Pupil, as
previously mentioned, comes to mind. Collateral as well, if we can jump genres
for a moment. And I love movies where your “good” character and your “bad”
character come together, and the good become corrupted and the bad find redemption. In Death
& Cremation, Jarod becomes inspired by Stanley and he makes that choice to kill;
alternatively, Stanley sympathizes with the boy and gives him a job as well as
companionship, remembering how life was for him at that age. It’s just a shame this wasn’t explored
as much as it should have been.
But that’s not to say the movie is entirely a lost cause,
because it’s not at all. Brad Dourif yet again proves that he’s up on that
screen for a reason. And while he devolves to appearing less nonsense from time
to time, roles like this and that of Doc Cochran in Deadwood showcase the man’s
immense range and talent. While the material he is given doesn’t quite match
his level talent, it sure is fun to see him kill people with baseball bats and
sledgehammers. And he provides a number of emotionally satisfying scenes.
Additionally, a curiosity in the film is the allusion to
Stanley’s sexuality, which is never quite explored. In the beginning sequence of
the film when Stanley turns down the married couple’s request for a normal
embalming service instead of a cremation, the father explains that his
brother-in-law has recently died of AIDs. It is after this revelation, and
after the family sees the lesions covering Stanley’s face, when the daughter
calls him a fag. I suppose, with the family having experienced AIDs within
their own family, they can see the warning signs. And despite the daughter’s
offensive indication of AIDs being a gay disease, it somehow feels like this
was included not to make us hate the daughter (which could have been
accomplished with any number of put downs), but to actually provide some
additional development for Stanley’s character. And later in the film, Stanley
has nightmares about his childhood in which his father abused him on several
occasions. Again, while nothing is ever provided in black and white, the abuse
suffered by his father, the girl’s labeling, and his lesions point to him being
a gay man slowly dying of AIDs….but there’s just one problem: beyond fleshing
him out as a character, this never comes into play during the film. Stanley
never wonders or confesses that the reason he’s decided to kill those he feels
deserves it are because he knows he is dying, and he figures why not do some
spring cleaning before he finally succumbs? And he never explains if he has
targeted certain victims because of the disease slowly killing him. The "fact" that he's a gay man with AIDs is just
kind of…there.
I’m glad to see Jeremy Sumpter still in the game. As you may
have read in my Unsung Horror column entry for Frailty, I was impressed with
him then for his ability to understand very complex themes that littered that
film, but still provide a very realistic—if not the most realistic—reactive
performance. In Death & Cremation, his role of Jarod doesn’t allow him to
show a wide range of emotions—really every character in the film is pretty
one-note—but I still believe him. The character he plays easily fits him, which may
have been a service of his rather stable but non-showcase career. A more
recognizable face may have derailed the role, but that would be a cheap
explanation for why his role is effective. The bullied, miserable, and lonely
Jarod isn’t exactly an unfamiliar teenager role, but he brings enough to the
table that you believe him. His transformation from a brown-haired, “normal”
kid into the black-haired, black-fingernailed Jarod helps him to disappear a
little into the morose victim of everyday high school bullshit.
In spite of the shortcomings, I enjoyed Death &
Cremation. As I previously mentioned, I always enjoy unorthodox and at-odds
relationships, and I appreciated the occasional lapse into dark humor. Besides, Brad Dourif’s performance is reason
enough to check it out, so all the rest is just a bonus, ain’t it?
