Boy, this movie really makes kind of an impression.
Annalynne McCord, last seen looking like a glamor-model-turned-actress in 90210, plays, in what is only the first of this movie’s many bits of stunt casting of famous faces in unlikely roles, a painfully awkward, geeky outcast with bad skin, greasy hair and rings under her eyes. She actually kind of pulls it off with a certain impressive intensity I wouldn’t have thought a puffball 90210 actress had in her. She plays socially inept and awkward—and maybe something darker peeking out underneath it—to the hilt and it’s actually pretty entertaining to watch. I bet she had to study real geeks to nail it this well.
Along the way, ex-porn star Traci Lords plays her extremely uptight and conservative mom, John Waters plays a priest with a completely straight face, and cameos pop up from Malcolm McDowall, Marlee Matlin, Ariel Winter as her kid sister with cystic fibrosis, and my man Ray Wise, who I don’t think I’ve ever seen in something that wasn’t enjoyable on some level.
The problem is the writing. The narrative basically plods along without real development, just following her episodically through her tortured high school and family experiences, without much real narrative development, until it gets to what’s less a climax than a punch line, at which point the movie just ends. If it had gone on a little longer to explore what happened it could have been a real story, but as it is, it’s just an anecdote, the horror movie equivalent of whatever a joke that ends in a pun is to humor.
But, even so, the reasonably compelling performances and amusing cameos from famous actors obviously having a good time made it entertaining enough for me to come down on the side of liking it, even if the story didn’t hold up. I’m sure I’ll watch it again at some point.
I definitely never thought I’d see a fashion model who could convincingly play an awkward dork.