False Positive
(2021)
Dir. John Lee
Written by Ilana Glazer and John
Lee, story by those two plus Alissa Nutting
Starring Ilana Glazer, Justin Theroux,
Pierce Brosnan
I like Broad City quite a bit, so when I heard
co-star Ilana Glazer had a horror movie, you bet I was on-board. Frankly, I’m more bullish on comedians making horror movies than the artistes who we
have lately allowed to run roughshod with the genre; at the very least, they
tend to have a more innate desire to entertain. I mean, it worked out pretty
well for Jordan Peel, right? If top-tier satirists are feeling drawn to the
horror genre, I’m at least game for it, even if horror-comedies have a pretty
uneven track record (and anyway, it’s not like normal horror is exactly famous
for its consistent high quality). Plus, we can always use more movies written
by women; though horror has never exactly lacked in female representation
on-screen, it’s rarer that a female star also serves as co-writer, so that’s a
nice bonus.
The pedigree is worthy, then (along with Glazer, we have
director John Lee, a longtime trench worker in weird comedy like Wonder
Showzen, Xavier: Renegade Angel, and The Heart, She Holler, along
with episodes of Broad City and Inside Amy Schumer and such, and
also director of PEE-WEE’S BIG HOLIDAY). This time, however, the resulting
movie leaves a little to be desired. FALSE POSITIVE (which is not something
this review will be) tells the story of Lucy (Glazer), who, along with her vaguely-defined
husband Adrian (Justin Theroux, noted former Jennifer Aniston boyfriend, and
hey, he was also in MULLHOLLAND DRIVE!) is having difficulty conceiving.
Somewhat reluctantly, she goes to see Adrian’s old med school professor,
leading fertility expert Dr. Hindle (Pierce Brosnan, Treehouse of Horror XII)
who quickly manages to induce pregnancy, but at the cost of the fact that he’s,
like, openly evil, and so Lucy begins to suspect that something sinister is
afoot, which would certainly explain all the ominous music on the soundtrack.
This is, then, pretty obviously a riff on ROSEMARY'S BABY, if by "a riff" you mean
"the exact same movie except with iPads and a way lamer ending." It correctly
understands that ROSEMARY'S BABY is about subtle subversion of female bodily
autonomy --an important topic which is every bit as relevant today as it was
1968, sadly—but in trying to articulate that theme, it simultaneously lays it
on too thick and too tentatively, emerging with a “message” movie whose
message is artlessly blatant but also lacks much bite. It grasps the idea of
womens’ autonomy being maliciously undermined in small ways, but the only thing
it can think to do with that concept is to run through little sketches which
demonstrate it. The doctor addressing her husband first and only then turning
to the person with the womb. Her theoretically-supportive boss constantly
asking her (the only woman at the firm) to pick up everyone’s lunches. Her
friends patronizingly blaming her anxieties on “Mommy brain.” And so on, again,
and again, and again, and again, and again, each time turning to us to say
“See? See?” until at the end the villain walks out and says “My evil plan was
to maliciously undermine womens’ autonomy!” and the movie says “What we have
just seen is a movie exploring the idea that womens’ autonomy is maliciously
undermined” and we roll credits.
Which is not in itself
inherently a problem. When you’re as mad as this movie is, sometimes a direct
approach is exactly what’s called for, a righteous hammer rather than a
delicate ballet. Thing is, though, for a movie this absurdly on-the-nose, it’s
also weirdly shy. The story keeps insisting on hints: small moments,
insinuations, careless slights and minute faux pas. But since it is also
absolutely petrified by the very notion that anyone watching might miss the
point for even a single second, it insists on giving you the same tiny
hint over and over until it’s sure you’ve got it. Which is to say, every single
scene in the movie –every single one-- involves someone saying something
subtly disempowering while Lucy looks quietly hurt. Little things, but little
things which contain a clear message. All frustrating and –for many women--
probably extremely relatable slights which sketch out an invisible conspiracy
every bit as malicious and far-reaching as the Satanic one in ROSEMARY’S BABY,
but far more mundane in practice: just a loose affiliation of good ol’ boys
who, despite their pretense to the contrary, will never, ever take women
seriously. But if the movie convincingly depicts these little moments where the
mask slips, it also never escalates into bigger moments, basically just
repeating the exact same scenario with the exact same spooky insinuation for
the entire none-too-hurried 92 minutes.
The result is basically MICRO-AGGRESSION:
THE MOVIE… but played as if it was THE OMEN, complete with bloody
hallucinations and ominous images set to music just this side of THE SHINING. That’s
a disastrous mismatch, because it refuses to allow us to simply empathize with
Lucy over how rude everyone is to her. Everyone is kind of a prick constantly,
but the movie’s tone insists that this is a matter of apocalyptic evil rather
than a perpetual annoyance. And the very mundanity of the situation makes that hard
to square, despite the insistent score (from Yair Elazar Glotman and Lucy
Railton, making their feature debut) and the moody, dread-soaked camerawork (by
Pawel Pogorzelski, Ari Aster’s guy).
It simply pushes too hard
with too little, making it impossible to stay on its side. Whereas ROSEMARY'S
BABY was content to let the little red flags add up and speak for themselves,
FALSE POSITIVE is functionally incapable of letting things speak for
themselves, and therefore strikes a tone of absolutely -- dare I say?-- histrionic panic
right from the get-go, making its equivalent emphasis on little red flags completely
self-defeating. Despite the quietly mendacious insinuations the movie clings to,
there’s no room at all for ambiguity; even if we ignore the aggressively spooky
tone and miss the opening few minutes (which flash forward and reveal this will
come to a bloody end*), Brosnan is practically twirling his mustache from
his first scene. He’s obviously a villain, the film is practically screaming at
us that there’s evil afoot, and it assures us this will end in blood from the
very start, so we don't ever experience the genuine horror of tumultuous
self-doubt that might actually strike a nerve (though obviously that's where
the script wants us to go), and instead this lady just seems like a chump for
taking the world’s bullshit and looking secretly wounded over and over. She’s
so mopey and passive in the face of the movie’s screeching proclamations of
doom that eventually we stop feeling sorry for her and start to feel like she’s
less a victim and more a passive-aggressive doormat. Which is not the direction
you want to push your audience when the whole point –I mean, like, the entire
point—is to generate sympathy for pregnant women oppressed by the
patriarchy.
 |
| I think this is possibly one of those "visual metaphors" you always hear about |
And yes, that is the point,
and it’s not a point the movie is going to let you miss. Like so many A24
movies, FALSE POSITIVE feels unreasonably anxious to dispense with the dull
requirements of narrative and genre content so it can get down to the business
of loudly declaiming about the ISSUES, about the PATRIARCHY, about how SCIENCE
IS A MALE-CENTRIC MALE-OCRACY AND NATURAL CHILDBIRTH IS THE ONLY WAY A REAL
WOMAN WOULD EVER BRING A CHILD INTO THIS WORLD. The last of which is a
particularly uncomfortable sentiment to espouse so passionately at this exact
moment (um, is Ilana Glazer an anti-vaxxer? Seems kinda like it), and
unfortunately not one which you can really ignore because due to the movie's
terror that you might miss the subtle point that it keeps making in every
single scene, it also takes the liberty of just going ahead and stopping
everything to have a character give a lecture on this topic, complete with a
slideshow of BABIES DEFORMED BY THE CALLOUS, COLDY UNFEELING SCIENCE OF THE
PENIS (these appear to be real medical photos, an especially questionable
choice). The criticisms expressed here are not exactly unwarranted or
without merit, but a youtube slideshow lecture sure is an awkward,
clunky thing to have right in the middle of your genre movie, and it's
about as subtle as Steven Seagal's speech at the end of ON DEADLY GROUND.
And it just feels so desperate. Do they really think that if we didn't
understand by the millionth repetition that the cavalcade of little slights ends
up leaving the lead character feeling oppressed and gaslit, that explaining it
aloud is going to do the trick?
As with so much modern
horror (particular from A24), this makes FALSE POSITIVE feel like a PSA first,
and a movie --let along a genre movie—a distant second. It's the kind of movie
so eager to demonstrate its intersectional right-thinking that it goes out of
its way to introduce a disorientingly stereotypical “ethnic” character just so
it can admonish itself for being racist. I mean, come on. I hate to use
the term “virtue signaling” because it's been co-opted by the absolute worst
people on the planet, and hey, virtue is a good thing, and it's fine to signal
it, especially if it encourages others to be virtuous. But this smug, handwringing
genuflection to the alter of twitter talking points is exactly why this kind of
thing irks people. In fact, it makes the very real issues the movie is about
feel phony and calculated, self-serving strawmen constructed to score easy
culture war points, rather than honest reflections of an imperfect real world. The
one-note desperation of the messaging makes the film seem insecure about that
very message; surely if they had real confidence in these themes, they would
just tell a story and let the message emerge naturally from that, rather than
stringing along a skeleton of a plot from a series of pre-planned talking
points.
SPOILERS ABOUT
THE ENDING: And
unfortunately, it’s not like this is all going somewhere which will justify all
the pedantic hand-holding. In fact, it’s not really going anywhere at all. The
ending is just kind of small and dumb, and while certainly on-point for the
movie’s theme (though no more or less than any other scene) I can’t help but
notice that it doesn’t seem to square up too well with the movie that leads up
to it. Turns out the big secret is: Brosnan’s narcissistic doctor has
impregnated Lucy with his own sperm, and was never going to take her preference
for a female child seriously. And I guess her husband was in on it, although he
remains a completely murky character and I’m not sure exactly how involved he
was in the whole thing. But that’s it, that’s the whole evil secret; there’s
nothing supernatural going on, there’s barely even a conspiracy, just some
sordid medical malpractice with rapey overtones. I guess she really was
a big hallucinating baby after all? I don't see why Dr. Hindle’s self-promoting
eugenics program would cause her to hallucinate and black out and shit.
And what was up with the sinister safe her husband was hiding? Was that real,
and if so, what was in it? Just, like, a letter that said, “I confess that I
collaborated with my medical school professor to impregnate my wife with his
sperm?” Obviously Lucy has been extremely ill-used, but this seems like awfully
small potatoes to have, like, a complete mental breakdown over. I’m not even
sure Dr. Hindle (and his sinister henchwoman, played by Gretchen Mol!) deserve
to be savagely bludgeoned to death. He definitely needs to lose his medical
license, get slapped with a bankrupting civil lawsuit, and probably spend some
time in jail, but at the same time, just marching into his office and murdering
him doesn’t feel like righteous vengeance so much as the movie anxiously
assuring us that, darn it, it sure would smash that nasty ol’ patriarchy right
up if only it could. It makes thematic sense more than it feels like it
naturally arises out of anything in the story or character. In fact, it really feels
most like something they reshot at the last minute when they decided
they didn't like their original ending, something that sort of vaguely relates
to the rest of the movie, but feels so arbitrary and disconnected that it’s
hard to believe this was always where the filmmakers intended the story to go.**
( END SPOILERS ABOUT THE ENDING.
Anyway, it’s not all bad news;
the movie looks great (Pogorzelski gets up to a lot of funny business with
mirrors and lighting, probably mostly out of boredom) it has a solid score, and
Glazer's expressive face --so great for comedy-- at least nails the nuanced
emotions she experiences (over, and over, and over) again. And Brosnan,
basically playing his character for velvet-tongued camp, is kind of a hoot. But
yeah, "ROSEMARY'S BABY but clumsier and more pedantic and with a worse
ending" is not really something the world was in desperate need of.
Although it is nice to have a version which wasn't directed by a rapist.*** Oh
yeah, right. That. Although I didn't like this movie much, let’s not forget
that despite its clumsiness, the very fact of Roman Polanski's continued
freedom does prove that it has something of a point. I just wish it were
expressed with more verve (and more whammy) than this.
* Man, good thing ROSEMARY’S BABY doesn’t open with her looking
at the devil-baby’s eyes and then flash back to “nine months ago,” huh? That
would really suck.
** END
SPOILERS CONTINUE HERE: This sense that the whole ending got re-shot into
vague nonsense is bolstered by what happens with the babies; returning home to
her disgusting, unwanted male children, she walks them over to the window of
her high-rise apartment and lets them float away, maybe vaguely playing off
some of the Peter Pan motifs which have been lurking around. But holy shit,
wow, she murders her own children! I’m not sure I’m on this lady’s side
anymore! But wait, oh, ok, I guess that was just a fantasy because then it
flashes back to her just handing them off to her weird husband and giving all
three of them the boot. Still pretty harsh, but more to the point, now we just
have two scenes in a row communicating the same basic rejection of her children,
and I just don’t believe a writer, even a bad writer, would think that was
necessary or wise. My guess is they originally ended with the window thing,
which is at least kinda bold and crazy, but then chickened out when they
realized that no audience, however pro-woman, was going to be happy seeing the
protagonist send two babies to splatter on the concrete fifteen floors below,
so they punted and tried to claim it was just a metaphor. But the fact that I
don’t really know just emphasizes how muddled this all is. END SPOILERS STOP
***As far as I
know
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