68 KILL (2017)

Studio:       IFC Midnight
Director:    Trent Haaga
Writer:       Trent Haaga, Bryan Smith
Producer:  Travis Stevens, Bob Portal, David Lawson Jr.
Stars:     Matthew Gray Gubler, AnnaLynne McCord, Alisha Boe, Sheila Vand, Sam Eidson, James Moses Black, Ajay Mehta, Michael Beasley, David Maldonado, Hallie Grace Bradley, Lucy Faust, Peter Jaymes, Eric Podnar

Review Score:

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Summary:

A submissive man’s life is turned upside-down after his sociopathic girlfriend convinces him to help steal $68,000.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Coworker Clint tries talking sense into Chip, who is hopelessly infatuated with his uninhibited, domineering girlfriend Liza. Chip comes home to the trailer he shares with Liza to discover she obtained handguns from her unstable brother Dwayne.

Liza explains her idea to rob Ken McKenzie, a sugar daddy she has sex with for money, so that she and Chip can run away together. Chip agrees to help Liza break into Ken’s safe and steal $68,000 under the condition that no one gets hurt.

Chip and Liza sneak into the McKenzie home. Chip is shocked when Liza unexpectedly murders Ken and his wife with a knife.

After taking the money, Liza and Chip are startled by the sudden appearance of a young woman named Violet. Violet is captured and locked in the trunk of the couple’s car.

Liza drives to her brother’s place. Chip is horrified to learn Liza plans to sell Violet to Dwayne for money in order to get rid of the girl, and that Liza has sold women to Dwayne before.

Tired of waiting outside for Liza, Chip goes into Dwayne’s hideout and finds the siblings watching a video of Dwayne torturing a previous victim. Liza follows Chip back outside and Chip, realizing Liza plans to have Violet killed, hits Liza with the butt of a gun. Liza vows to kill Chip for turning on her before falling unconscious. Dwayne comes outside. Chip shoots Dwayne in his shoulder before escaping in the Ford Mustang.

Liza recovers and chases after Chip. Liza forces Chip to pull over for a confrontation. Liza tells Chip she will kill him if he doesn’t kill Violet, but she suddenly falls unconscious again. Chip leaves Liza in the road and drives away.

Chip lets Violet out of the trunk. Violet grabs Chip’s gun and threatens him at gunpoint. However, as their conversation deepens, Chip and Violet develop a mutual connection to one another. Violet gives back the gun. Unable to kill or abandon her, Chip returns to the road with Violet as his passenger.

Chip and Violet are pulled over by Officer Stevens. Violet gets Chip out of the situation by creating a story about picking up Chip in a bar and wanting to have anal sex with him. Living vicariously through Chip, Officer Stevens lets Chip go.

Chip and Violet stop at a gas station. When goth cashier Monica notices Chip’s stack of cash, she tries extorting him for $200. Violet interrupts, insults Monica, and pulls Chip back to the car to lecture him about standing up for himself.

Chip and Violet stop at The White Rose Motel. Growing closer emotionally, Violet tells Chip that she was manipulated into becoming a sex servant to the McKenzies after Ken cost her a job and her apartment. Chip and Violet have sex.

Chip wakes the next morning to find the money and his clothes missing. Initially assuming Violet robbed him, Chip is horrified to find Violet’s mutilated body in the bathtub. Assuming Liza was responsible, Chip calls his ex-girlfriend with a threat only to learn that Liza spent the night in a hospital.

Chip talks to motel clerk Sam, who tells Chip about a wild party in his room that Chip doesn’t remember. Chip realizes it was Monica who stole the money and killed Violet. Chip apologizes to Sam before knocking him out in order to steal his car. Chip also dresses from clothes found in the motel’s lost and found.

Chip returns to the gas station. Cashier Amy coerces Chip into performing oral sex on her in exchange for Monica’s address.

Chip arrives at Monica’s trailer and is ambushed at gunpoint by Monica’s boyfriend Leroy. Amy arrives, revealing she was part of the plot to rob and recapture Chip all along. Also in the trailer are the trio’s friends Fatty and Skinny. Monica and her friends spend the night doing drugs and torturing Chip.

Chip regains consciousness in the morning to see Liza crouched over him, asking about the money. Leroy, Monica, and the others wake and a standoff with Liza ensues. Dwayne enters and shoots off Leroy’s arm with a shotgun. Dwayne then uses a machete to kill Fatty and Skinny. Liza allows Dwayne to take Amy and Monica into a bedroom so he can torture them in private.

Liza gives Chip a speech equating him to a dog and her to his owner. Chip proclaims that he is leaving Liza and he exits the trailer. Liza follows after Chip with a gun and threatens to shoot if he takes another step. Chip turns around and shoots Liza in her throat.

Chip returns to the trailer and kills Dwayne, who had already viciously murdered Amy. Monica pleads for her life, but Chip shoots her too. Chip then arranges the bodies to frame all of them for the murders and sets the trailer on fire.

Chip takes the money and returns to the road in the Mustang. Chip considers stopping to help an attractive woman stranded on the side of the road, but continues driving instead.

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Review:

We’ve all been Chip at some point.  Hopelessly infatuated with someone inexplicably irresistible, yet about as good for us as a trip to Willy Wonka’s factory is for a kid with diabetes.  We know it can only end in disaster, though our misinformed hearts throw us head over heels into willfully dumb decisions anyway.

Chip’s case takes clouded judgment to extremes.  He does mundane work draining sewage and comes home to a trailer furnished with barely a pot to piss in.  No wonder he succumbs so easily to the spell cast by batsh*t bombshell Liza.  She may have a side job as a hooker, but she’s a sultry, uninhibited dynamo who plays by her own rules.  In short, Liza is everything Chip isn’t, making her a white-hot whirlwind of excitement he just can’t say no to.

That includes Liza’s proposition to steal $68,000 from a sugar daddy she sleeps with to pay rent.  Although eternally subservient to all of her whims and desires, Chip has just enough willpower to pose one stipulation: he’ll help Liza jack the cash provided she promises no one gets hurt.

Well, someone gets hurt, and that’s only the tip of an unavoidable iceberg with Chip at the helm of the Titanic.  An unexpected act involving Liza and a knife drop kicks the first domino, setting off a chaotic chain of events that has Chip on the run from one outrageously dangerous situation to the next, encountering thieves, sexpots, serial killers, and more slaughter than he can stand along the way.

“68 Kill” is a story of sex, violence, money, and how shocking it can be for a rolling snowball to become an avalanche of anarchy.  Trent Haaga’s film, adapted from Bryan Smith’s novel, gets down in the gutter for a field trip on the trailer trash side of the tracks.  Here, Haaga gets the goods from creepy characters, slutty sensuality, and bold bloodshed to stitch up a grimy feel that is as close to an exploitation era aesthetic as a contemporary crime thriller can get.

“68 Kill” gets away with its gobs of grindhouse grain by slathering scenery in deeply dark humor and switching stereotypes regarding which sex wields the power.  There might even be a term paper in here for a creative college student exploring gender role reversals in film.

When Chip is extorted into forcibly performing oral sex on a gas station skank in exchange for essential information, the setup is played for laughs that come while watching Matthew Gray Gubler move his mouth toward a groin sore or dry heaving afterward.  Swap the man and the woman in this situation and tone would take a terrible turn.

These kinds of characterizations and turned tables keep mature material edging toward entertaining instead of toward uncomfortable.  “68 Kill” is unafraid to rip open its shirt and show its skin, and then rip open its skin to show the guts underneath.  That unapologetic fierceness about presenting visceral violence and sex wants to be in your face, and it is.  Yet there is a soft subtly to Chip’s hard luck sweetness layering in surprisingly smirky enjoyment underneath.

Right now, I regret having already cited the “directing is 50% casting” adage in a preceding review because the notion applies as much here as anywhere.  I, and likely anyone associated with the movie too, cannot conceive of a personality more fitting to play Chip than Matthew Gray Gubler.  Gubler’s relatable good guy demeanor swings all sympathies to his side, yet he retains an understated steeliness positioned perfectly for all of the hats Chip has to wear to reach his finish line.

As Liza, AnnaLynne McCord embodies the sexual napalm of John Mayer’s dreams.  McCord’s siren-like stride commanding control of her screen with wildly wicked eyes sells the scare of psychotic instability while simultaneously showcasing seductive charm.  Like Gubler in his, there is no person more perfect for her part.

Although blackly comic, “68 Kill” is gritty and sleazy through and through, so much so that some won’t jive with its violent vibe.  I personally thought the texture would turn my thumb down until I saw deeper into the acting and realized the story was not in fact focused on being sordidly smutty.  You only have to dip past the surface of its cult cinema carnage.  Because the film’s raunchy rawness is essential to servicing its pulp fiction narrative about perverted power plays.

Review Score:  75

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