Still Waiting for Twilight

It's been years since we've heard from the grand master of the horror film, George Night of the Living Dead Romero. While his last film The Dark Half left most of the audience cold, we horror fans have been waiting with bated breath for Romero's latest offering - would it be the Resident Evil movie? The Black Mariah? Carnivore? The long-rumored fourth installment of the living dead series, Twilight of the Dead?

While the fans speculated and postulated, Romero was able to sneak off under the radar to write and direct Bruiser, a craftsman-like film that's sort of a continuation of the themes explored in The Dark Half but will probably not do anything to put Romero back on the horror map.

Andrew (Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels) Tarbet is James Larson, an upper-middle class nice guy with a half-built house that's too pricey for him to maintain, a bitchy high-maintenance wife, a dead-end corporate job for a fashion magazine (the magazine is called Bruiser, thus the film's title), an obnoxious boss from hell (Peter Stormare, the film's only recognizable "star" name), and an old buddy who is steadily losing James' money in the stock market. In short, he's the classic everyman with a few more problems than most.

James's financial, home, work, and love life go from bad to worse in the first thirty minutes of the film - his wife is having an affair with his boss, his best friend is embezzling money from him, his job is being threatened. But James, the nice guy that he is, just lets these horrible truths roll off of him with startling ease.

Finally, James (and the viewer, for that matter) comes to a breaking point, symbolized by his waking up without a face. That's right. No face. Just a blank, expressionless, white mask. Emboldened by this loss of identity, James goes on a trail of revenge against all those who have wronged him ...

Sounds pretty good, huh? To be honest, it is . . . for about the first thirty minutes or so. Everyman James's life is shot in muted, cold colors, the film filled with subtle portents of bad things to come. James has recurring "revenge fantasies" that we initially think are real (a great trick Romero used with the Adrienne Barbeau segment of Creepshow) and this set-up gets the brain thinking about what will happen when James finally grows some balls. Unfortunately, this promise is never fulfilled once James loses his face.

James loses his henpecked identity. Enter the requisite romantic sub-plot that doesn't really go anywhere, the police hot on the trail of the faceless killer (adding insult to injury is generic grizzled cop played by Tom "I'm always the grizzled cop" Atkins), and the climax at a party that happens to be a costume party even though it isn't Halloween. That way, the faceless killer is hard to find, get it? By the time the party climax comes around, the deliberate starkness of the film's opening is gone in favor of "wacky costume party" stuff. Add in an appearance by geriatric horror rockers The Misfits (performing at the party, naturally), and you've got an extremely generic outcome.

Maybe I'm judging Bruiser too harshly simply because it's a George Romero film. But anybody who reads this review and then watches the film probably has some passing interest in the work of Mr. Romero and will feel the same as I did. He is, after all, the father of the modern horror film! And there's nothing more disappointing than a film with a strong beginning that quickly fizzles out.

Not that I'm a gorehound (well maybe I am, but gore isn't my criteria for judging all films), but the special effects - or lack thereof - were somewhat disappointing. Even the Grand Kahuna death of Stormare at the end is clean, bloodless, and very much a letdown. I was expecting at least a drop or two if the red stuff from the man who pushed the envelope with Dawn and Day of the Dead.

I'm still a die-hard Romero fan, but Bruiser was NOT the comeback I was hoping for.