**** outta *****

4 outta 5

Assassination Nation is an interesting if somewhat flawed film. It looks great and it has some really edgy and gripping moments throughout. There is a bit of simplistic philosophizing which isn’t as deep as it thinks it is but it is well delivered and the movie has a palpable sense of rage. Written and directed by Sam Levinson Assassination Nation wants to condemn the sex and violence that is also uses to entice the viewer. It opens with a “Trigger Warning” and then flashes images of flesh and blood flying that is about to come which is quite a mixed message. But it does get your attention and doesn’t let go.

Lily (Odessa Young) is a high school student in the suburbs of Salem who loves to party and send sexy pictures to her boyfriend. Her friends include Sarah (Suki Waterhouse), Em (Abra) and Bex (Hari Nef). One day, the personal data of the mayor leaks which causes chaos and embarrassment for the town. Soon other people’s data is being leaked, like the school Principal (Colman Domingo), and everyone is going crazy. Insanely, someone lies and tells the town that Lily is the one behind it, putting all of their lives at risk.

There is quite a large ensemble and the gaggle of girls and their tangle of fibs, texting and judgement is a huge part but Young is basically the centre. She has more than a few monologues about the unfair and random nature of their life in high school that she absolutely nails. She has one scene where she defends her explicit art about how she’s trying to say that it is impossible to achieve perfection. Also another great monologue is at the end as she is armed with weaponry and saying how she is going to fight back that is positively filled with a revolutionary furor.  Lily spends a lot of the movie texting to a mysterious “Daddy” on her phone and the culmination of their relationship has a good pay off. Nef plays Bex who is transgender and Nef has some of the most sympathetic stuff. She is one of the most likable characters probably because she is the only one who doesn’t seem entirely narcissistic. So it is a tad manipulative that Bex is threatened with death the most. The other two girls are sort of indistinguishable from each other.

Outside of the core group, there a self-absorbed cheerleader played by Bella Throne who laments that people have to accept that privacy is dead. But she ticks off the wrong girl played by Maude Apatow and the moment when she gets her revenge is great. Domingo as the Principal has a few good scenes, especially when he refuses to resign, although his character completely disappears in the 2^nd half. Joel McHale as an obsessive husband has some good stuff such as terrorizing a poor schmuck in a bathtub. As a student who goes to school with Lily, Bill Skarsgard also gets to go nuts with some crazed monologues. This plus his role as Pennywise the Dancing Clown in IT, he’s doing a pretty good job of playing psychos.  

The movie flips around the middle instead of being about personal data leaking and then there’s a cut to a “One Week Later” card and the entire town has turned into The Purge, complete with creepy masks and rolling violence gags pillaging innocents. It’s a straight up cheat that the descent into town-wide madness is blipped over. Now the film is satirical before everyone starts wearing creepy clown masks so the flip works but it almost seems like the film is snapped in two.

The 2^nd half of the film is takes the notions of high and mighty superiority and amps it up to kill crazy mobs. This part is more of a stalk and chase thriller with lots of violence which keeps things lively and engaging. Setting the movie in Salem makes it seem like the mob mentality of public trail and execution is the leftover cultural history of the Salem Witch Trails bubbling up from underneath the surface after hundreds of years of being repressed. The best thing about the city wide chaos that grips the sleepy town of Salem is a great final sequence of two sides facing off against each other. Also the end credits runs over a marching band happily performing a cover of Miley Cyrus’ “We Can’t Stop” in the aftermath of suburban war chaos which is an oddly perfect symbolic metaphor for the movie’s vibe. A lot of the visuals get to be downright abstract and impressionistic which can be oddly off kilter. The music by Ian Hultquist is absolutely fantastic as it as lot of atonal, weird soundscapes that works with the montages and feel really creepy.

Assassination Nation is certainly a unique experience. It does have some interesting things to say about communication and perfect ideals in 2018. Assassination Nation also kind of gives up on those ideas to just have a lot of cool, graphic, scary violence. It is also sometimes an abrasive and incoherent mess. Frankly, that has a lot of say about life in 2018 too.