R is for 'Resolution' (a #BizzeePick) (#AtoZChallenge)

Hello, WORLD! Smokkee here adding another movie to my favorite movie list, which I affectionately call my Bizzee Picks. Typically, the types of movies I add to this list are ones I'm more than sure most of yall haven't seen before, which is a travesty to me since these are some of the best movies of whatever genre they are a part of. Usually, that genre is horror and this post isn't an exception so to speak but it's not your typical horror movie either. There's no violent images, none of those cheesy, overused horror tropes like jump out scares, or those false scares started by amped up music letting you know something horrible is coming... and then the horror never shows. 

Wait, there is one that is used, a fairly common one at that. In fact, this movie puts me in the mind of another fairly recent horror movie that not only uses the same overused horror movie trope, it's named after it. And then they skewer it in ways that make them both stand out. The biggest difference between these two movies is the other is ultra gory for skewering purposes and this movie isn't, presumably for the exact same reason. 

Chris (left) and Mike having a heart to heart talk in 'Resolution'

Another movie it reminds me of, another Bizzee Pick at that.. but not a horror movie, is Storytelling. They are both essentially addressing the same subject matter, with equally shocking results. Now that I think about it, maybe Storytelling is a horror movie flick after all... It also doesn't have any violence, unless you count THAT infamous sex scene, but it does leave you feeling some type of way. As does this movie. Both movies even have almost the same line of dialogue about beginnings, middles, and ends...


Intrigued, yet? No? let me continue then.

The film I'm adding today is 2012's Resolution, written by Justin Benson and directed by Benson and Aaron Moorhead. You're probably familiar with this pair's last offering, 2014's genre defying movie Spring, or their high energy segment in the last movie in the horror anthology V/H/S franchise ('V/H/S Viral') called 'Bonestorm'. If you remember the scene with the skateboarders, you don't even have to go back and watch it to know which one was theirs.  While both of those are excellent, Resolution is my favorite work by this pair so far and got me eager for more.

The plot is fairly simple. A married man named Michael receives an email of his buddy Chris alone in some forest with some dog doing cocaine, talking to himself, just acting like he's losing his mind. Michael (played kind of stiffly, probably by design, by Peter Cilella) does what he feels is the right thing by leaving his pregnant wife for a week to try to convince Chris (a hilarious performance by Vinny Curran) to go to rehab. Mike didn't set out to leave his wife for a week's time, I'm sure, but it winds up being that long after he fails to get Chris to enter rehab and decides he'll just handcuff Chris to the wall of the house that Chris is residing in until he decides to give rehab a try. Wait, did I say it was house? I meant to say 'cabin in the woods' Chris is residing in at the time. 

You see where this is going, right?

Wrong. Absolutely wrong. One common thread that Bizzee Picks have in common is you can't look at the beginning of one and say "Oh, I know exactly where this is heading." I very rarely even like movies like that to begin with. I won't stop you from thinking you will but no, you won't. You won't even have a clue. 

A few things I should mention before I go in further and this is about as close as I get to revealing any spoilers. For starters, the freewheeling Chris didn't actually buy the drugs he was using; he doesn't seem to have any money nor any ambition towards getting any money. "I'm a junkie." he says at one point with as much pride in his voice as a newborn's father saying "It's a boy." 

Bryon (Bill Oberst) creeping out Mike.

The drugs were given to Chris by some mutual friends of Chris and Mike and it's implied that they are really bad guys now, something Mike isn't aware of since he hasn't seen them in quite some time. Also, that cabin in the woods they're in? It's not his either and on top of that, it's on an Indian reservation and the tribe's spokesman Charles (Zahn McClarnon) isn't too fond of these guys being here without the tribe's OK. Mike bribes him to let them stay for few more days but if he had any sense, he would have left, especially after the dog is brutally killed by either by the Mike's former friends or by Charles and the tribe.


The most disturbing detail I'll give you is the fact that Chris didn't actually send Mike any email to begin with....       


The plot basically juggles these tidbits over and over again for the first 45 minutes or so, forcing you to accept these as truths first and then daring you to see where this goes. And then it goes elsewhere. You see it early on in bits and pieces but it really starts to get surreal when Mike, right after the dog is murdered, tracks down the dog's real owner Byron (Bill Oberst Jr, who might not be a household name yet but is well known to Internet users as the guy who creeps you out in this video here) and gets seriously creeped out by this guy too when Byron tries to explain what happened to some French guys who were in the area working on something. 

Chris and Mike beginning to notice something isn't right in these woods..

This scene is like the Silencio scene from Mulholland Drive because it's the scene that divides the slow burning first half of the movie from the faster paced second half. Byron's theory regarding what's really going on just might be fairly accurate. After we get past this scene things start happening really fast and this movie moves from a buddy flick to something a lot more surreal. And just when you think our guys are finally clear of the insanity, the ending reveals itself to be one hell of a gut punch. 




 I won't say nothing else about this movie except if you're a fan cerebral movies or horror movies, this movie is for you. You'll definitely be thinking about it for a while after it ends. What else do you need to hear from me? Just

 
watch it. Trust me. You'll like it.


Later, WORLD.
Smokkee Singleton