[rating=7.00]
It’s a national conversation that has been repeated so often that it borders on parody. The self-aggrandizing Baby Boomers who scowl and rasp at the entitled and ungrateful Millennials, disparaging their inability to chase an American dream that their own generation has been single-handedly snuffing out since the late 1970s.
That conflict is dead center of Richard Bates Jr.’s horror flick Tone-Deaf, which, for a horror movie, spends an inordinate amount of time dwelling on the canyon-sized risks between those born in the wake of WWII and those who were born into an economic and political hellscape with low wages and even lower hope for the future.
It’s not done subtly, but that’s not the point. And it’s this willing disregard for nuance that makes Tone-Deaf such a delightful watch.
Embodying the gruff and calloused Boomer is Robert Patrick as Harvey, a self-ascribed salt-of-the-Earth type whose long monologues go on and on about those crybaby pussies worrying about a dying planet breathing its last breath. They lean heavily on the fourth wall, never quite willing to break it.
They also tend to be repetitive, as they don’t really give any new insight into Harvey’s motivations. But then again, his motivations aren’t exactly complicated. As one might expect, they seem to align with every quasi-inbred Trump voter who’ve managed to find a workaround for their erectile dysfunction by fantasizing about killing off anyone who was born after Reagan’s inauguration.
This crosshairs land squarely on Olive, played with a ferocious, no fucks-giving flair by Silicon Valley‘s Amanda Crew. After getting fired from her job and breaking up with her boyfriend, York — played by Nelson Franklin at his most delightfully melancholy — she opts for a break from her LA life.
Taking her mother’s advice, Crystal (Kim Delaney), an aging hippy she rents an old house in rural California for the weekend, which happens to be run by… wait for it… Harvey. You see where this is going, right?
Still, Tone-Deaf is far from a blood-bath. Alternating between Olive’s own self-care inspired getaway and Harvey’s curmudgeonly commentary, the film ratchets up its tension incrementally with relatively little bloodshed along the way. That’s not to say there isn’t some bloodshed, which is typically presented with the same mix of stylish thriller and delightful irreverence.
Perhaps must most rewarding aspect of Tone-Deaf is its utter disregard for even attempting to form some kind of solution. Well, that and the fact that it simply refused to humanize Harvey beyond an increasingly bloodthirsty MAGA Chud.
Ultimately, Tone-Deaf is the kind of low-budget horror movie that manages to take a perfect snapshot of the cultural zeitgeist. It has all the markings of a potential cult classic. The kind of film that funnels its minimalistic commentary effectively through play-by-play slasher tropes, creating the kind of film that even Gen-Xers will cathartically enjoy.
Tone Deaf is in theaters now.Â
