NEW to Shudder, Destroy All Neighbours is a flaky and somewhat twisted horror-comedy with plenty of splatter and not so much substance.
Directed by Josh Forbes, it tells the off-the-wall tale of William Brown (Jonah Ray Rodrigues), a neurotic, self-absorbed musician determined to finish his prog-rock magnum opus – a project he has been working on for years but seems no closer to finishing.
William’s long-suffering girlfriend Emily (Kiran Deol) puts up with his foolish notions and the fact he always has one excuse or a o other for never completing anything.
She just about puts up with his overly complicated and pretentious compositions, but, according to William, “not everyone will get it, but the right ones will”.
Right now, he’s facing a creative roadblock, but still fantasises about being the best thing to hit prog-rock since Emerson, Lake, and Palmer while moping through his job as a studio engineer (a glorified “knob-twiddler’) that is as poorly appreciated as it is paid.
He puts his current bout of innovative malaise down to his new noisy and troll-like neighbour Vlad, played by Alex Winter of Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure fame, complete with full prosthetics.
When he finally works up the courage to ask his rather grotesque next door neighbour to keep the music down, things take a rather gruesome twist and William accidentally beheads the nasty Vlad.
From here it is gory mayhem and goofy comedy all the way to its ostentatious, pernickety and enthusiastic finale complete with Mellotron and bassoon.
Destroy All Neighbours is a twisted splatter-comedy that turns out to be a deranged journey of self-discovery that brims over with guitar solos, oodles of blood, and jokes that run out of steam quickly despite all the muster.
Forbes’ film ultimately proves as exhausting as Genesis’ acid trip of a double-album, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. Definitely not for everyone, but perhaps this too is a case of the right ones will get it.
(2/5)
