Hometown zeroes

IT WOULD BE EASY TO DISMISS Weirdsville as the kind of film best experienced on drugs or by people who did drugs on a daily basis. That would be an insult to people who regularly indulge in controlled substances. Alexander Moyle's comic-noir caper about a hooker and two dope-addicted morons on the run from Canadian Satan-worshippers would be hard to sit through even under the most narcotic circumstances.

Any filmmaker should have been able to generate some kind of chemical reaction with the combined indie pedigree of Taryn Manning (Hustle & Flow), Scott Speedman (My Life Without Me) and Wes Bentley (American Beauty). Moyle can't ignite a single spark from Willem Wennekers's shallow screenplay, mostly due to his ham-handed attempt at stylization. Multi-angle, rapid editing results in shots that rarely last longer than five seconds, but do nothing to enhance atmosphere, create rhythm or distract from hackneyed conventions.

Junkie buddies Royce (Bentley) and Dexter (Speedman) break into a house in their go-nowhere Canadian town by smashing a window with a lawn gnome. Flashback one week earlier, and motivation is explained when Royce's girlfriend Matilda -- who doesn't turn tricks, she insists, but does make appointments for high-class business dates -- casually brings up a rich client with a safe (camera ZOOMS into safe) for which she just happens to know the combination (CLOSE UP on numbers on dial of safe).

But before that can happen, Matilda apparently overdoses on the lion's share of the $1,700 worth of drugs the boys have been fronted by psychotic dealer Omar (Raoul Bhaneja). Unaware of how to check for vital signs such as a pulse, breathing or cold-to-the-touch skin, they stuff her in a hockey bag and plan to bury her in the basement of a place where they pretty much know they'll run into former classmate Abel (Greg Bryk), who is now a practicing Satanist leading a pair of followers who look like stand-ins for Adrian Grenier and Avril Lavigne. They go anyway. Mayhem and mirth ensue.

That seems to be the plan Wenneker came up with for his original short film, but the feature Moyle tries to stretch the premise into is lifeless. It's not just the dead-of-winter setting, generic soundtrack songs and chilly, blue-green digital feel of the cinematography, either. Moyle directed the 1990 Christian Slater vehicle Pump Up the Volume and wrote and directed 1995's slice-of-life comedy Empire Records. Both had fairly preposterous plots; the former benefited from Slater's then-credible intensity as a teen rebel with a pirate radio station, while Moyle seemed to already be losing touch with the latter's uninspired attempt to capture the era when indie record stores were at their zenith.

Moyle tries hard to be cutting edge -- Jean-Pierre Jeanet, Danny Boyles, David Fincher and Paul Greengrass are all in his sights -- while surely trying to stick to a fast production schedule. If there was more vision on the front end, with more thought put into shot composition and less adherence to trendy, attention-deficit filmmaking, Weirdsville might have been an innovative indie gem instead of the reactionary film-festival fodder Moyle ultimately made.

Weirdsville

Wes Bentley, Taryn Manning, Scott Speedman. Directed by Alexander Moyle.