WHO'S WATCHING OLIVER. (2017)
DIRECTED BY RICHIE MOORE.
WRITTEN BY RAIMUND HUBER, RICHIE MOORE AND RUSSELL GEOFFREY BANKS.
STARRING RUSSELL GEOFREY BANKS, MARGARET ROCHE AND SARA MALAKUL LANE.
REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©
'Peekaboo, I see you...!'
'You're my happy place.'
'Did we dispose of that trashy cunt?'
'Hey, handsome man, where you go?'
'Me so horny, me love you long time!'
'What did Mamma do to Daddy when Daddy burned Oliver...?'
'That happens when you're a kid. You have to do these things you don't want to.'
'Now clean up your mess, Oliver, and go to bed. Night-night, Mamma loves you.'
Who's watching Oliver? Who's watching Oliver? Well, I'll tell you who should be watching him, and that's a team of top bloody psychiatrists, psycho-analysts and behavioural psychologists, and all from a safe distance, while Oliver is trussed up Hannibal Lecter-style on the other side of unbreakable plexiglass. Because Oliver is a serial killer as fucked-up as any you'll ever encounter this side of Buffalo Bill, and the tragedy of it all is that it isn't even his fault, for the most part.
Firstly, kindly allow me a moment to boast. I was asked personally to review this one by none other than Russell Geoffrey Banks himself, the handsome actor who does a phenomenal and, I believe, award-winning job playing Oliver, the saddest and deadliest serial killer of our time. I jumped at the chance. It was the producer and writer of the film, Raimund Huber, who sent me the film and the rest, as they say, is history. A deeply disturbing, troubled history...
WHO'S WATCHING OLIVER was one of the highlights of the Irish Film Institute's annual Halloween Horrorthon in 2017, five days of non-stop horror movies, some old and some brand-new classics-in-the-making, while maintaining the regular schedule for the normals.
I didn't get the chance to see WHO'S WATCHING OLIVER then myself, but my best mate did. How was it, I demanded when she got back from viewing it. I don't want to talk about it, she sniffed. And she didn't utter a single solitary word about it until this very weekend, now that she knows I've finally seen it for myself. Now the truth is coming out at last, lol.
Apparently, the audience greeted WHO'S WATCHING OLIVER with a mostly shocked silence broken only by nervous titters. I didn't think it was possible to shock the kind of hardened movie-goers who frequent these horror film festivals but, apparently, WHO'S WATCHING OLIVER managed that feat with a quite remarkable aplomb.
It shocked me too, I don't mind saying, and I'm terribly torn right now between wanting to tell ye absolutely everything about the film because it's so brilliant and trying not to spoil it for ye. No-one spoiled it for me and that's really the best way to view it. Let's see if I can now proceed to tread that very fine line, shall we? Okay, gas-masks on (it's vitally important not to breathe any of it IN, it could do irreparable harm to your system) and let's do this...
Oliver is a total nerd. With his limp, lank scraped-back hair and nerd-specs that just need a bit of sticking-plaster in the middle to complete the effect of total dweebdom, he's not exactly God's gift to women. And I think he knows this too, poor thing. But it's okay, because he has his own system, you might say, for picking up chicks...
He's on holiday in one of those foreign Far East countries like Thailand. With his nerdy knee-length shorts, tourist camera and a short-sleeved shirt with a tie (like Sipowicz!), he trawls the streets, parks, nightclubs and bars looking for victims. As it's one of those countries where you can buy sex on any street corner, he has relatively little difficulty in so doing.
The first victim we see him with is not a Thai prostitute but a punkish-looking European girl who is lured back to Oliver's flat with the promise of drugs. What he does to her in his flat is horrible beyond words. Although, as she disrespectfully snorts a line of cocaine off of his old Mum's photograph, maybe she's kind of got it coming, the dirty little hussy, lol. Disrespect his old Mum, would you?
There's an additional aspect to the brutal rape and murder that I'm not going to disclose to you guys, but maybe you should cover the floor with something soft while you're watching the film. This is so that, when your jaw hits it with a thump, as it will, you don't do yourself any lasting damage. I wish someone had given me this advice before I watched the film. As it is, I'll be wearing this brace for a while...
Anyway, now it's time for the clean-up chez Oliver. A drop-sheet, a Haz-Mat suit and one acid bath later, and it's as if Punky Drugs Whore never even existed. A human life snuffed out, just like that. He does a Scissor Sisters with the body parts (the Scissor Sisters, named for the band but not the band, were a pair of real-life Irish sisters who murdered their mother's boyfriend here in Ireland some years ago, look 'em up online!) and Bob's your Uncle, the job's oxo. Girl gone...
One day, Oliver meets a beautiful Meghan Markle-lookalike on a park bench, the kind of girl who shouldn't ordinarily want to touch Oliver with someone else's va-jay-jay. I mean, I wanted to ask her what the fuck she thought she was doing, feeding candy floss by hand to a dingus like Oliver, but there's no accounting for taste, is there?
Meghan Markle Girl- she's called Sofia, but we'll call her Meghan Markle Girl because you honestly can't tell 'em apart- tells Oliver her dreams on a park bench. Sooooo interesting, not, lol. There's nothing more boring than being made to listen to interminable accounts of someone else's dreams. I know this because my kids tell me so every morning, the cheeky whippersnappers. The young mismatched pair fall in love anyway, which is wonderful for Oliver but it also presents him with problems.
For one thing, he's not his own man. He's being controlled by a force so strong, so primeval, that it would take a stronger man than Oliver to break it. It's not Olly's fault that he's so damaged and broken and weak. The fault lies at the feet of the woman played here by Margaret Roche, who does such a powerful and magnificent acting job that she deserves a whole bucketload of Oscars.
Can Oliver break free from this force and try to make a normal life for himself with Meghan Markle Girl? A life without killing, a life without the rape and battery of the innocent women whom he picks up and brings home on false pretences? I'll tell you this much, folks. It would take a freakin' miracle...
Keep watching during the credits or you'll miss a vital twist in this, the sickest and most disgusting story of mater-love since a certain Norman Bates stuffed his own loving Mother with sawdust and plonked her on the couch at the Bates Motel for all eternity.
This is the horror film of the year for me. I won't forget it if I live to be a hundred. Rock-solid performances from the actors playing Olly and his closest female relative will have you on the edge of your seat. Or hiding behind it, crying uncontrollably for your Mammy. Whichever's good for you, lol.
Irish Mammies, by the way, do not behave like the Mammy in this film. Irish Mammies
worry incessantly that their offspring will catch pneumonia by going to bed with damp hair or venturing a foot out-of-doors without a scarf, even in the summer.
Irish Mammies send you crates of Barry's Tea and Denny's Sausages and Cadbury's Chocolate if you go abroad for five minutes, in case you forget you're Irish, and they pray to the Virgin Mary and seventy-nine Saints every night that you won't have sex until you're married, even though they know you've been living with a guy for years and have two kids and an incurable STD by him. Poor Irish Mammies. They've an awful lot to put up with.
It's the writers of this obscene filth-fest WHO'S WATCHING OLIVER whom I feel sorry for, however. Sure, if I were invited on a free guided tour of their sick mids I'd take it- nothing ventured, nothing gained, after all, and if it's free- but not without a loan of Olly's Haz-Mat suit. It's just that mucky...
WHO'S WATCHING OLIVER is out on home release in the USA now courtesy of GRAVITAS VENTURES.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.
Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, film blogger, poet and book-and-movie reviewer. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, womens' fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra's books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO
You can contact Sandra at:
http://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com
Wonderfully written review!
ReplyDeleteThank you kindly, Rock! Much appreciated,
DeleteSandra Harris.