The stoner's collapsible bong

Rating: Null/10 (17 May 2012)

This is clever not so much in the obvious way it is put together - self-aware horror laced with commentary on the process - but in terms of dynamics present in the work. We need to trace that all the way back to the authors in control of the thing.
Three-layered structure is pretty ordinary these days. The base layer is a blatant Evil Dead scenario with teenagers spending the weekend in an old cabin in the woods. From their end, until a certain point, they experience around them the typical supernatural horror film, where reality is chaotic and reading out loud the wrong incantation in Latin means things go bump in the dark.
The twist; a second level where things going bump are controlled from. This is where the audience gets together to hedge bets before the big screen playing our film, it's also the writers' level where plot and effects are decided, where all the clichés of the previous level are contrived to happen; the slutty behavior, the illogical decisions, the panic, the voices dictating action. There are many stations like ours we come to find, each one supervising its own horror film and similarly attempting control of the outcome. There is talk of another level for the Director. We find out that all the other stations have failed, even the Japanese (!), and it falls on our guys to see through their horror film.
A third layer is ancient evil lurking in the bowels of the earth and imminent world destruction, you should know this is all effect.
Now this sort of structure where an audience decides upon violence that we have paid to enjoy is so commonplace, last year it was the subject of the latest Hostel installment. There is little fun here.
No, all of the fun is watching the thing collapse upon itself. Superficially, it is all about mayhem that comes from loss of narrative control. My ongoing project is a study of film mechanics, in the assumption that every effect and device in the way we imagine stories is semi-consciously modeled after functions of the mind.
So it's important to me to get to note why this works the way it does. We'll need to follow this a bit more closely.
Now the collapse is the direct result of something really contrived happening which the writers in control of the film either overlooked or could not solve; an ordinary plot point goes awry, the most predictable victim has made it through, and in the most outrageous manner, by single-handedly tearing to pieces an all-powerful redneck zombie.
You will note this narrative glitch as an actual glitch in the electronics in the second floor. You will also note the stoner carries with him a bong, a bong that collapses in three layers to become indistinguishable.
So this is the stuff that movies are made from, one of those purely cinematic illusions hat hinge their entire effect - a good time - on having you buy the most incredulous action - think Tom Cruise in MI4.
And since the deeper drive here is a battle between chaos and order, between instincts and control of them, between a narrative and authorship of it, you should not fail to notice that chaos in the film runs rampant not because the physically impossible was achieved - stoner tears apart redneck zombie - but because the mind responsible for a coherent story lost focus and wandered.
So of course the film breaks and all sorts of fragments from monster stories are unleashed. The collapse means a helluva time for the viewer but an end of the world inside the film.