Editorials
Xavier Dolan’s Queer Psychosexual Thriller ‘Tom at the Farm’ Channels Hitchcock [Horrors Elsewhere]
Horrors Elsewhere is a recurring column that spotlights a variety of movies from all around the globe, particularly those not from the United States. Fears may not always be universal, but one thing is for sure — a scream is understood, always and everywhere.
Distinct elements found throughout Xavier Dolan’s filmography include strained parent-child relationships, queer desire, and discrimination. While his fourth feature Tom at the Farm seems like a complete detour from his previous dramas, his first genre film still manages to cover all three said themes with gravity and style. The addition of psychological horror only underlines Dolan’s growing discipline as a storyteller and flair for complicated characters.
An immeasurable amount of stories sees people reluctantly returning to their hometowns to mend what is broken or find closure, but Dolan’s character is an absolute stranger to the rural town visited in Tom at the Farm. Rather, he only goes there to pay his respects to the family of Guillaume, the love of his life he recently lost to a car accident. The film’s namesake, a young urbanite with a conspicuous coiffure and matching taste in fashion, arrives at his pastoral destination shortly before the funeral. He stays at a dairy farm with Guillaume’s mother Agathe (Lise Roy), who is in the dark about her son’s sexuality and the exact nature of his relationship with Tom.
That night while sleeping in Guillaume’s old bedroom, Tom is rudely awakened by Francis (Pierre-Yves Cardinal), Agathe’s other son he had no idea even existed. Francis is fully aware of who Tom is, and he threatens him to stay silent about everything so as not to upset his mother. The original plan was for Tom to give a eulogy and then leave after the funeral, but instead of escaping when he has the chance, Tom indefinitely stays at the farm. In his quest to make peace with Guillaume’s death and help his family cope, Tom now ignores various warning signs as he latches onto Francis.
Dolan’s adaptation of Michel Marc Bouchard’s play Tom à la ferme differs in both the overall tone and ultimate outcome. Reviews of the stage show pick up on the dark humor in everything, but the filmmaker curbs the comedy for the most part. As a result, viewers are left with an austere display of abuse and festering anguish. Dolan and co-writer Bouchard plot a different course than the one taken in the source material, yet the address remains the same. The play and film each analyze how three disparate people each handle a staggering weight of grief.
The foremost conflict in the movie is between Tom and Francis. From their first meeting, it is clear who the dominant and submissive characters are. Wherever Tom is vulnerable and unsuspecting, be that in the shower or in a restroom stall, Francis suddenly appears as a reminder he controls him. The play has Francis punch and torture Tom into submission — Tom is dangled over a ditch full of dead cows at one point — whereas in the movie, Cardinal’s interpretation is more restrained. The calculating Francis knows he can kill Tom with little effort, but eventually, it is not his fists that make Tom reconsider leaving.
As with most of Dolan’s other films, characters grapple with homophobia. Francis uses his mother’s apparent intolerance as a way to justify his own bias. It never crosses Agathe’s mind Tom could be more than Guillaume’s coworker and friend; she has been led to believe he had a girlfriend named Sarah. This is the work of Francis — he keeps a photograph of his brother kissing this Sarah person on him at all times not necessarily for lascivious reasons, but because it is the only picture of adult Guillaume he has — who created the lie and now wants Tom to play along. Francis presses Tom to explain to his mother Sarah’s absence at the funeral, to which Tom then reworks his unused eulogy on the fly and passes it off as Sarah’s message to Agathe. The mother does not see through the veil because this helps maintain the illusion. The play, on the other hand, shows Agathe learning the truth she likely knew all along on some level.
Meanwhile, Francis’ homophobia is as overt as it is complex. He thinks hiding Tom and Guillaume’s relationship is a way of protecting his mother, but all he is really doing is serving his own agenda. At first, Francis browbeats and bruises Tom into behaving accordingly, yet as time goes by, he comes to feel something other than contempt. It is not certain there is a sexual attraction, seeing as the reasons they are drawn to one another are not identical. For Francis, he firstly sees Tom as a companion who does not yet know about his past. The other townsfolk avoid Agathe’s oldest son or look at him in fear, and Tom has no idea why. That kind of nescience is appealing to a pariah like Francis. The fact that Cardinal’s character does everything in his power to keep Dolan’s from leaving or learning why Francis is so ostracized is evidence of his desperation for kinship.
The play shows Francis and Tom being physically intimate at times; specifically, they kiss, embrace, and sleep side by side. The movie, however, does away with this occasional tenderness in favor of more sustained aggression and innuendo. As Francis pins Tom down upon his first attempt at leaving, he spits into his mouth to establish dominance and force intimacy. Then in the iconic tango scene inside the barn, Francis and Tom’s bodies become so entangled, they fail to notice Agathe standing in the doorway and listening to her resentful son’s tirade. In what is perhaps the most charged moment between them, Tom now welcomes Francis to wrap his hands firmly around his throat, begging for him to squeeze harder and harder. Francis feels pleasure as well and even grants Tom control over the situation, but his excitement dies as soon as Tom says Francis smells and sounds like his brother. The disappointment writ large on Francis’ face, he releases Tom and walks away.
The arrival of Sarah (Evelyne Brochu) is where the movie behaves more like a thriller after slowly churning out suspense. Tom calls in a favor, and Sarah comes to the farm to appease Agathe. Francis is taken aback by her presence, but that does not stop him from accosting her both physically and verbally. Unlike Francis though, she threatens him back. Tension swells as the ruse falls apart, and Tom finally learns why Francis is the town’s outcast. Now knowing the gruesome truth and evading the same possible fate, Tom makes a run for it in the anxious and indeterminate finale.
At several points in the film, the aspect ratio becomes more and more severe and tight to convey a gamut of emotions. That sort of audacious filmmaking is partly why Dolan is so deservingly regarded. Tom at the Farm is a consummate display of his talent both in front of and behind the camera, and it demonstrates his equal flexibility with arthouse and genre stories. André Turpin delivers stunning cinematography, and Gabriel Yared’s simple yet uneasy score channels Bernard Herrmann.
Dolan isolates the best parts of vintage noir and repurposes them in this utterly subtextual thriller. The wunderkind director and actor puts himself in the place of blonde, imperiled women of yesteryear and gets lost in a layered and psychosexual story. The glaring violence and puzzling homophobia are explored with frank curiosity and deftness. Although “Hitchcockian” is arbitrarily thrown around these days, no term is more flattering or applicable when describing a tour de force like Tom at the Farm.
Twice a month Joe Lipsett will dissect a new Amityville Horror film to explore how the “franchise” has evolved in increasingly ludicrous directions. This is “The Amityville IP.”
A bizarre recurring issue with the Amityville “franchise” is that the films tend to be needlessly complicated. Back in the day, the first sequels moved away from the original film’s religious-themed haunted house storyline in favor of streamlined, easily digestible concepts such as “haunted lamp” or “haunted mirror.”
As the budgets plummeted and indie filmmakers capitalized on the brand’s notoriety, it seems the wrong lessons were learned. Runtimes have ballooned past the 90-minute mark and the narratives are often saggy and unfocused.
Both issues are clearly on display in Amityville Karen (2022), a film that starts off rough, but promising, and ends with a confused whimper.
The promise is embodied by the tinge of self-awareness in Julie Anne Prescott (The Amityville Harvest)’s screenplay, namely the nods to John Waters’ classic 1994 satire, Serial Mom. In that film, Beverly Sutphin (an iconic Kathleen Turner) is a bored, white suburban woman who punished individuals who didn’t adhere to her rigid definition of social norms. What is “Karen” but a contemporary equivalent?
In director/actor Shawn C. Phillips’ film, Karen (Lauren Francesca) is perpetually outraged. In her introductory scenes, she makes derogatory comments about immigrants, calls a female neighbor a whore, and nearly runs over a family blocking her driveway. She’s a broad, albeit familiar persona; in many ways, she’s less of a character than a caricature (the living embodiment of the name/meme).
These early scenes also establish a fairly straightforward plot. Karen is a code enforcement officer with plans to shut down a local winery she has deemed disgusting. They’re preparing for a big wine tasting event, which Karen plans to ruin, but when she steals a bottle of cursed Amityville wine, it activates her murderous rage and goes on a killing spree.
Simple enough, right?
Unfortunately, Amityville Karen spins out of control almost immediately. At nearly every opportunity, Prescott’s screenplay eschews narrative cohesion and simplicity in favour of overly complicated developments and extraneous characters.
Take, for example, the wine tasting event. The film spends an entire day at the winery: first during the day as a band plays, then at a beer tasting (???) that night. Neither of these events are the much touted wine-tasting, however; that is actually a private party happening later at server Troy (James Duval)’s house.
Weirdly though, following Troy’s death, the party’s location is inexplicably moved to Karen’s house for the climax of the film, but the whole event plays like an afterthought and features a litany of characters we have never met before.
This is a recurring issue throughout Amityville Karen, which frequently introduces random characters for a scene or two. Karen is typically absent from these scenes, which makes them feel superfluous and unimportant. When the actress is on screen, the film has an anchor and a narrative drive. The scenes without her, on the other hand, feel bloated and directionless (blame editor Will Collazo Jr., who allows these moments to play out interminably).
Compounding the issue is that the majority of the actors are non-professionals and these scenes play like poorly performed improv. The result is long, dull stretches that features bad actors talking over each other, repeating the same dialogue, and generally doing nothing to advance the narrative or develop the characters.
While Karen is one-note and histrionic throughout the film, at least there’s a game willingness to Francesca’s performance. It feels appropriately campy, though as the film progresses, it becomes less and less clear if Amityville Karen is actually in on the joke.
Like Amityville Cop before it, there are legit moments of self-awareness (the Serial Mom references), but it’s never certain how much of this is intentional. Take, for example, Karen’s glaringly obvious wig: it unconvincingly fails to conceal Francesca’s dark hair in the back, but is that on purpose or is it a technical error?
Ultimately there’s very little to recommend about Amityville Karen. Despite the game performance by its lead and the gentle homages to Serial Mom’s prank call and white shoes after Labor Day jokes, the never-ending improv scenes by non-professional actors, the bloated screenplay, and the jittery direction by Phillips doom the production.
Clocking in at an insufferable 100 minutes, Amityville Karen ranks among the worst of the “franchise,” coming in just above Phillips’ other entry, Amityville Hex.
The Amityville IP Awards go to…
- Favorite Subplot: In the afternoon event, there’s a self-proclaimed “hot boy summer” band consisting of burly, bare-chested men who play instruments that don’t make sound (for real, there’s no audio of their music). There’s also a scheming manager who is skimming money off the top, but that’s not as funny.
- Least Favorite Subplot: For reasons that don’t make any sense, the winery is also hosting a beer tasting which means there are multiple scenes of bartender Alex (Phillips) hoping to bring in women, mistakenly conflating a pint of beer with a “flight,” and goading never before seen characters to chug. One of them describes the beer as such: “It looks like a vampire menstruating in a cup” (it’s a gold-colored IPA for the record, so…no).
- Amityville Connection: The rationale for Karen’s killing spree is attributed to Amityville wine, whose crop was planted on cursed land. This is explained by vino groupie Annie (Jennifer Nangle) to band groupie Bianca (Lilith Stabs). It’s a lot of nonsense, but it is kind of fun when Annie claims to “taste the damnation in every sip.”
- Neverending Story: The film ends with an exhaustive FIVE MINUTE montage of Phillips’ friends posing as reporters in front of terrible green screen discussing the “killer Karen” story. My kingdom for Amityville’s regular reporter Peter Sommers (John R. Walker) to return!
- Best Line 1: Winery owner Dallas (Derek K. Long), describing Karen: “She’s like a walking constipation with a hemorrhoid”
- Best Line 2: Karen, when a half-naked, bleeding woman emerges from her closet: “Is this a dream? This dream is offensive! Stop being naked!”
- Best Line 3: Troy, upset that Karen may cancel the wine tasting at his house: “I sanded that deck for days. You don’t just sand a deck for days and then let someone shit on it!”
- Worst Death: Karen kills a Pool Boy (Dustin Clingan) after pushing his head under water for literally 1 second, then screeches “This is for putting leaves on my plants!”
- Least Clear Death(s): The bodies of a phone salesman and a barista are seen in Karen’s closet and bathroom, though how she killed them are completely unclear
- Best Death: Troy is stabbed in the back of the neck with a bottle opener, which Karen proceeds to crank
- Wannabe Lynch: After drinking the wine, Karen is confronted in her home by Barnaby (Carl Solomon) who makes her sign a crude, hand drawn blood contract and informs her that her belly is “pregnant from the juices of his grapes.” Phillips films Barnaby like a cross between the unhoused man in Mulholland Drive and the Mystery Man in Lost Highway. It’s interesting, even if the character makes absolutely no sense.
- Single Image Summary: At one point, a random man emerges from the shower in a towel and excitedly poops himself. This sequence perfectly encapsulates the experience of watching Amityville Karen.
- Pray for Joe: Many of these folks will be back in Amityville Shark House and Amityville Webcam, so we’re not out of the woods yet…
Next time: let’s hope Christmas comes early with 2022’s Amityville Christmas Vacation. It was the winner of Fangoria’s Best Amityville award, after all!
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