"And my mother," greasy-haired Pauline converses with God. "Kill her."
Little or no explanation is required on Richard Bates' Excision quite arguably being one of the toppers of the genre of the year, let alone the most demented movie on teenage angst. The movie's horror isn't reliant on the conventional shocks, pulse-racing suspense or frequently cheap scares; but on its core, delving deep to the world's horrendous facts. An impressive concoction of satire, tension and gore, the movie floats by in a fashion of escalating intensity. While this is already a thankful treat, we are yet to face a deliciously chilling end, something we couldn't have ever prepared for seventy minutes or so before.
AnnaLynne McCord plays the stereotypical oddball teenager - boyish bod, pimply face, outlandish persona - Pauline who only has two main tasks. For one, to have premarital sex and lose her virginity (note, while on her period) and and find cure to her "slowly dying" cystic fibroid younger sister Grace (Ariel Winter). McCord gives us a rewarding performance, seeming to shake her head to be the dominantly dumb bitch (like in Fired Up and Day of the Dead); and nodding to a character requiring more skill and a layered performance. Pauline's in one sense may resemble Lola (played by Robin McLeavy) from The Loved Ones. Lola's carnage is pure fiendish, while Pauline's plight is something that is far more deeper and humane.
She is constantly rebuked by her own mother Phyllis (played by Traci Lords). "...my mom, as I'm sure you know, is a total bitch," Pauline confesses. Her father Bob (Roger Bart) is kind of a pussy, so there's no one left to love except the sweet Grace. Beyond these facts, Pauline is also plain twisted. In hiatus to this reality - in her dreams - she is a surgical goddess devoted by her hypersexual slaves and minions.
Support roles from Lords, Bart and Molly McCook (as the queen bee-yotch) further bolster Bates' already tight script. Deft direction develops it into something greater. The year is very close to the end and it's only sinful to overlook a movie in likeness of Excision, a completely outlandish, but a towering piece of unsettling work to cinema, let alone its genre wherever should it be considered fit.
VERDICT: A
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