Movie Review: Spree

Spree ** / *****
Directed by: Eugene Kotlyarenko.
Written by: Eugene Kotlyarenko and Gene McHugh.
Starring: Joe Keery (Kurt Kunkle), Sasheer Zamata (Jessie Adams), David Arquette (Kris Kunkle), Kyle Mooney (Miles Manderville), Misha Barton (London), Frankie Grande (Richard), Lala Kent (Kendra), Joshua Ovalle (Bobby), Reatha Grey (Grandma Adams), Caroline Hebert (Daisy), Sunny Kim (uNo), Linas Phillips (Frederick), John DeLuca (Mario), Jessalyn Gilsig (Andrea), Sean Avery (Officer Hall), Victor Winters-Junco (Officer Hernandez), Amir M. Korangy (Davit the GoGo Driver).

 

So far it seems like filmmakers are not up to the task of depicting the kind of everyday violence, committed by angry, very online young white men that grows out a mixture of loneliness and misogyny and inflicted on the world as “payback”. Perhaps it’s because the filmmakers who are mainly making movies about them are themselves, white men – but they seem incapable of fully depicting the anger and misogyny, and instead too often depict their central characters as they seem themselves – as victims of the online society that has left them behind, rather than the angry, violent men that they are. Like Todd Phillips completely misreading Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy in last year’s Joker – making the Bickle/Pupkin character in a victim rather than a violent man looking for an outlet for that violence, or the recent The Hater, which didn’t seem to have handle on its character at all, the recent film Spree – about a young man named Kurt Kunkle (Joe Keery) – who has attempted to build a social media following, and completely failed, leading to the wild night depicted in the film – where he works as a Spree driver (think Uber) – where he kills many of his passengers, and livestreams it all (still failing to gather a following) seems to think that Kurt is a victim of this society, rather than a lonely, angry, misogynistic psychopath. I’ve seen the film compared to American Psycho – if only that were true. The film version of American Psycho, is superior to the book version, specifically because director Mary Harron and her co-writer Guinevere Turner, come at Patrick Bateman from a completely different point-of-view making him far more pathetic than the alpha-male posturing of Bret Easton Ellis’ novel. If only we had their version of Spree.

Spree is another film than takes place entirely online – mostly the livestream that Kunkle runs throughout the night in his car – equipped with multiple cameras for different angles, but also some different perspectives as well (different people’s videos and livestreams, etc.). We are informed early that Kunkle has been trying to gain a following for 10 years – but his videos rarely hit double digits in views (the way we are informed of this, via onscreen text implies that we are watching some sort of documentary – but it’s confusing because it’s pretty much abandoned from then on). What we see from there, is how Kunkle’s night unfolds – from his first passenger, an angry, older white man spewing racism that drinks the poisoned water bottle Kunkle has put out for his passengers, to more and more extreme violence Kunkle commits throughout the night. Keery, very good on Stranger Things, is good here as well – a smiling psycho, who never drops his cheerful, online brand – the man with the plan, who wants to impart on his fans “The Lesson”.

The film muddies the water too much though with the introduction of Jessie Adams (Sasheer Zamata), an up-and-coming black standup comedian, with a huge online presence – she has everything that Kurt wants, and cannot get. She gets into his Spree – alongside another passenger (it’s Spree social) – but when she gets out, unscathed, the film and Kurt don’t abandon her either. We keep coming back to her – and know her path will cross with Kurt’s again before the night is out.

I know what co-writer/director Eugene Kotlyarenko is doing here – after introducing us to Kurt, then the angry older Fox News viewer, and the bro-y frat boy Mario – all of whom have a version of the angry white man shtick going, he wants to introduce a new perspective – one decidedly not white, and not male. In theory, this is the smart move – by showing the perspective of the type of person who is too often the victim of this online hate, you cannot be accused of being locked into the perspective of the perpetrator of it and feeling sympathy for it In practice though, it doesn’t work at all – as both Adams stand-up set that goes viral, and the end of the film, heavily implies that Adams is a huge part of the problem in the first place – and although, like Bickle in Taxi Driver, she is treated like a hero by the media, the movie makes you think she shouldn’t be.

In short, Spree is another film that tries to address the issue of online hate, of violence spreading from the digital world, to the real world – but it’s another one that doesn’t quite understand what the issue is at all. Or maybe, it does – and the execution is just way off. And it’s all wrapped in a package so extreme – the violence is almost comically over-the-top that whatever message the filmmakers are trying to send, doesn’t come through at all.