Mark Reviews Movies: FUNHOUSE

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Review by Mark Dujsik | May 27, 2021

Funhouse is, at best, confused and, at worst, cruel. That doesn't necessarily mean there's a question about or a distinct line between those qualities.

Writer/director Jason William Lee's movie is confused about an assortment of things. On the surface, the most muddling element is the movie's stance on celebrity and the popular culture surrounding that status. Beneath that, there's the fact of the movie's tone, which shifts wildly from satirical, to sentimental, and to sequences purely intended to shock.

Through all of it, though, the movie is primarily mean-spirited and unpleasant—an attempted takedown of society's fascination with and revulsion of fame, as well as people's twisted allure toward violence, that revels in watching a group of fame-chasing ex-celebrities be brutally murdered. We're supposed to feel bad for the inevitable victims, of course, as they start revealing a little more about their pasts and their feelings. That doesn't change how Lee invents some rather gruesome deaths for these characters—or in what graphic detail he depicts those ends. It's difficult to feel repulsed by the audience voting for and cheering on these killings, when the movie itself seems so perversely obsessed with them.

The premise has a group of eight former and current D-list celebrities agreeing to take part in a new reality show. Kasper (Valter Skarsgård), who was once married to a famous singer and participated in a reality show that followed their marriage, awakens in a strange house, after being drugged and brought there.

The other contestants—all of them lured with a prize of $5 million—include some other questionable celebrities. Lonni (Khamisa Wilsher) was a bachelorette on a show trying to find a husband, mostly known for being left at the altar twice. James (Christopher Gerard) is an MMA fighter, currently more famous for his many legal problems. Ula (Karolina Benefield) is a social media star, who has gained a massive following by baring a lot for the camera.

There are more, but that's the basic idea. Besides, most of them are killed off before they get anything more than a simple introduction.

The whole enterprise, being streamed live online 24 hours a day and seven days a week, is run by the sociopathic Nero (Jerome Velinsky), who appears before the contestants on screens throughout the house in the form of an animated panda. The host tells the players they have to win the hearts of the audience, who will vote for their favorite housemate. The person with the lowest score has to participate in a challenge or face leaving the house.

Nero doesn't mention the twist: that the departure will be in a body bag—intact or in pieces. The contestants find that out the hard way, when one player is blindfolded and tricked into beating the loser to death with a spiked baseball bat. Armed guards wearing panda masks ensure that no one refuses to participate or tries to escape.

Beyond the scenes of helpless and grisly murder (Someone, for example, is dunked feet-first into a vat of acid, until only his torso remains, and another person is drawn-and-quartered, with close-ups of limbs ripping), there's an overwhelming sense of nihilism to all of this. A global audience of all ages watches and participates in the voting—not only for who will live (and, hence, die), but also, at least in one case, for how the loser will die. Indeed, the viewers become even more involved and excited once Nero's fatal twist is revealed. Interludes featuring a facetious pop-culture reporter (played by Bradley Duffy) have him skeptical of the reality of this "reality show," only for him to make even more jokes and puns as it becomes clear that people are actually being killed.

Lee's satirical approach, then, is wholly scattershot—mocking the methods of fame and celebrity status of the housemates, seeing the average viewer as a bloodthirsty voyeur, taking the pop-culture media to task as filled with people who don't care about the lives or deaths of the human beings they cover. Does Lee touch upon some worthwhile points with his broad and unfocused jabs? He does, but that doesn't change how obvious, how shallow, or, within the context of portraying all these killings with such macabre sensationalism, how hypocritical any of those more-or-less accidental insights come across here.

This is a movie that wants to make a point, essentially, about the ugliness of dehumanization. In Funhouse, though, the ugliness and dehumanization become the point.

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