Review: Crave

Score:F

Director:Charles de Lauzirika

Cast:Josh Lawson, Emma Lung, Ron Perlman

Running Time:113.00

Rated:NR

Detroit is having another bad year. Extremely high rates of poverty, unemployment, and crime continue to ravage a once great city. It got so bad they even had to file bankruptcy. And to add insult to injury, they're the location for the worst show of the year "” AMC's Low Winter Sun "” and now the worst movie as well. 

Crave is an ugly, misogynistic, grim little movie. It's a tonal mess, shifting from extreme violence to graphic sex to attempts at dark humor, often within the same scene. Aiden (Josh Lawson) plays a crime scene photographer who daydreams about being a vigilante. His gory visions often end with him in bed with a "grateful" woman. This guy should be institutionalized.

Instead, we're supposed to root for him (I guess) to get the girl. Emma Lung, essentially playing Zooey Deschanel with low self-esteem, is his newly single neighbor Virginia. The whole time I was just wishing she would run away from this guy instead of sleeping with him. 

Sadly, the movie stays stuck in a cycle where Aiden fantasizes about saying something clever but ends up saying something stupid. Virginia blows him off, but he apologizes and wins her back. Occasionally, Aiden will actually extort or beat up someone who deserves it (pedophile, rapist, thief). But there's no excitement or entertainment to be found in a reprehensible person attacking a slightly more reprehensible person. I kept rooting for him to get caught by the police.

Even worse, this garbage lasts for nearly two full hours. It's a punishing film to sit through that never feels like it's going to be over any time soon. There's no redeeming value to this mess. It apparently won Best Director at Fantastic Fest in 2012, and the voters should be ashamed of themselves. There's no humor, heart, or humanity in this miserable movie. 

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About Kip Mooney

Kip Mooney
Like many film critics born during and after the 1980s, my hero is Roger Ebert. The man was already the best critic in the nation when he won the Pulitzer in 1975, but his indomitable spirit during and after his recent battle with cancer keeps me coming back to read not only his reviews but his insightful commentary on the everyday. But enough about a guy you know a lot about. I knew I was going to be a film critic—some would say a snob—in middle school, when I had to voraciously defend my position that The Royal Tenenbaums was only a million times better than Adam Sandler’s remake of Mr. Deeds. From then on, I would seek out Wes Anderson’s films and avoid Sandler’s like the plague. Still, I like to think of myself as a populist, and I’ll be just as likely to see the next superhero movie as the next Sundance sensation. The thing I most deplore in a movie is laziness. I’d much rather see movies with big ambitions try and fail than movies with no ambitions succeed at simply existing. I’m also a big advocate of fun-bad movies like The Room and most of Nicolas Cage’s work. In the past, I’ve written for The Dallas Morning News and the North Texas Daily, which I edited for a semester. I also contributed to Dallas-based Pegasus News, which in the circle of life, is now part of The Dallas Morning News, where I got my big break in 2007. Eventually, I’d love to write and talk about film full-time, but until that’s a viable career option, I work as an auditor for Wells Fargo. I hope to one day meet my hero, go to the Toronto International Film Festival, and compete on Jeopardy. Until then, I’m excited to share my love of film with you.

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