WATCH OUT - A film by Steve Balderson: review by Synergy Magazine

ROBERT BLACK
Synergy magazine

WARNING: Contains Spoilers

Over the years all manner of sexuality has been explored on screen, heterosexual, homosexual, fetishes of all sorts, from the most harmless to the most extreme - but I do not think I have ever seen a film explore sexual narcissism.

Watch Out is based on the novel by Dr. Joseph Suglia and is the story of Jonathan Barrows who is not only a narcissist but can only enjoy sex with himself! The film is divided into two acts and presented somewhat like a 1920’s movie. Throughout the film the words Watch Out are flashed on the screen like the dialogue in a silent movie.

As the film opens we see poor Jonathan being harassed by his parents who feel they must find him a date. They try to match him with a rather dull girl who lives next door and ask her drunken father a range of extremely embarrassing questions, he then demands to know if his daughter has had any boys “put their thing in her”, belts her with an umbrella and hints that he has drilled a hole in her head! This opening scene makes it clear Watch Out will be a very strange experience. Jonathan is forced to go on regular dates with her as they wander aimlessly through the cemetery he simply feels more and more alienated. When the girl next door fails to give his parents what they expect they hire a prostitute and sit with popcorn and a camera to celebrate their son’s first sexual experience, which of course fails, but not before one of the more awkward scenes in cinema for quite some time!

As the story progresses we come to understand that John only loves himself, it seems at first glance he is neither gay nor straight and is a true misanthrope, finding humanity repulsive and beneath him. He makes love to himself using photographs, movies and a blow up doll with his own face attached. Watch Out is at times explicit and certainly in the first Act amusing. The film is sustained by an impressively biting and satirical voice over which is at times insightful, at other times just plain vicious and nasty. As Barrow travels to Benton for an interview for a job at a community college, he reflects on his fate with dissertations of how he sees the world and the people around him. The strange thing is that while he is unbearably arrogant, narcissist and vicious, there are so many times you agree with what he says. He may be an arrogant bastard, but he seems to be an honest and rather perceptive bastard!

As he reaches Benton and signs into the local motel, he comes face to face with the mediocrity of the suburbs and this is portrayed in all its horror, from the local bar to the closeted gay desk clerk at the low grade motel at which he stays. The more he has to deal with the stupidities and inanities of the people around him, the more infuriated he becomes. At first things are just a nuisance but as the secretary at the college does not seem to be even able to arrange the interview he has traveled all the way to Benton for, he reaches breaking point. This first act of the movie is a superb mixture of sexual humour, dark and bizarre characters which certainly have a “John Waters” feel and cynical misanthropic commentary.

There are so many truly amazing scenes which make this film stand out that I cannot list them all. The scene with Barrow and the female student in the cafe when he describes why he cannot love a woman is so misogynist it is screamingly funny. Then there is the priest and his reaction to the woman in the confessional and his suicide by vacuum cleaner, still the most memorable scene must be Barrows love scene with his own picture stuck on a blow up doll - truly astounding.

As Barrows begins to lose control he decides to wait and confront the professor who has ignored his interview. He hides the closet and waits for Dr Mendoza and listens to his lecture. What he hears does not impress him, Mendoza degrades the significance of the individual, praises the community and argues that the only value a man or woman can have is through marriage and children and thereby through it participating in the larger community. It is such a revolting and conservative presentation that I think it would even send me over the edge!!

At this stage things get very weird, but what exactly occurs is not quite clear, all the figures that he has slighted in the community seem to take revenge on him in a scene of anal rape. Whether this actually occurs in reality or is in mind, we are unsure, it does seem more like a hallucination caused by a lifetime of being hounded and abused for being different and this sets off a chain of events which lead to Act Two.

Act Two, however, moves the story to a very different level. Now John wants revenge and the film movies the black humour of act one into that of a dark horror film. Here we see John taking revenge on all those who have wronged him in a series of surprisingly grisly vignettes. These “set pieces” ranging from killing his professor and stuffing his severed penis down his throat to sewing together his babysitter and her boyfriend! The final killing is his ultimate attack on mediocrity, as he kidnaps a highly celebrated pop singer. She pleads for her life offering to do anything (including golden showers and drinking her own piss) and while the voice over explains his contempt for the bankruptcy of a culture which makes heroes of average people who have little significance (such as pop singers), he cuts off her toes. We hear police cars in the background as he walks to the bathroom and discusses what he will do to complete his killing spree before they arrive.

Watch Out is a unique and powerful work of cinema. In my mind it is one of the most unusual and challenging films I have seen in 2008. The acting is really quite superb, Matt Riddlehoover as Jonathan Barrows is not only physical stunning (and you see quite a bit of him!) but totally inhabits the character. The supporting characters presented throughout the film are superbly perverse, bizarre and above all, convincing. The film looks and sound great and while the use of a voice over is not always popular today, it worked perfectly in Watch Out, it gave us insight into Barrow’s inner world and gave the film a psychological authenticity which added validity to the films premise.

What does Watch Out mean? I leave that to you. There are all sorts of possible interpretations. While Barrow does seem to be primarily an outsider and misanthrope, he does seem to have more contempt for woman than for men and you wonder whether him hiding “in the closet” at the end of act one before his final rampage has significance. At the same time there is lots of psychological literature about narcissism, asexuality and people who prefer the company of themselves, so perhaps this is simply the first cinematic exploration of this unrepresented form of sexuality. His rage and fury in the second Act certainly seems to be representative of the torment he has experienced throughout his life from his parents onwards and in many ways is a motif found in much of outsider literature, ranging from the geek as outsider to the experience of sexual minorities.

Whatever we take from Watch Out this is compelling, shocking, entertaining, humorous and at times even horrifying. It is quite a journey and an absolute much watch!!