The Soska Sisters' Rabid: a belated negative review

I don't much trust critics, so when the overall critical consensus on the Soska Sisters' 2019 remake of Rabid seemed pretty negative, I didn't invest much in it. I also didn't rush out to see it - I had plans to, at one point, but something-or-other came up, and then the film was out of the theatres pretty much for good. When I saw it on the shelf today at Sunrise Records - with a few extra bucks in my pocket, a desire for distraction from the heat, and no better ideas for films to watch tonight - I picked it up, both to finally scratch the itch and because there was some feeling of supporting something local. I mean, I've crossed paths with Jen and Sylvia a few times, have enjoyed observing their brand-building, and if there was a certain clumsiness to moments in American Mary and See No Evil 2, there were also some charming and memorable bits in both films, a sense of genuine playfulness and enthusiasm and subversive intent that made you want to overlook any flaws you might notice. If I had some misgivings that they could do justice to remaking one of Cronenberg's most interesting and ambitious early films, I was still curious to see what they would do with it. 

Plus, you know, you want your local talent to flourish, right? Even if their films aren't actually set in Canada, they're made here, and I like that Jen and Sylvia have done things like host screenings of The Shining at the Rio while wielding an axe, you know? They've done their bit to support the scene here, so you kinda want to support them back. Or so I felt at one point...

So now that I've paid my $25 and bought the blu of Rabid and invested two hours in it, I can now fairly say it: what a disappointing mess the film turns out to be. I was able to engage with it for the first half, which only had a few miscues - though those were notable and irritating: why does Stephen McHattie look like his face is paralyzed throughout his walk-on as Dr. Keloid? Why does he let Rose look in a mirror, then tell her not to look in mirrors, pretty much a minute apart? (If the abrupt self-contradiction is meant to be funny or ironic, the Soskas bungle it; it just plays as incoherent). And why did no one correct his pronunciation of "keloid" to be in keeping with the way the doc's name is pronounced in the first film, and to maintain Cronenberg's deliberate pun on a term for a kind of scar tissue...? 

Also irritating: why, when there was a perfectly fun name for the clinic in the first film - the Keloid Clinic - do they give that name to a minor character, and name the clinic after William Burroughs? It's too obvious a name to drop, really, taking you out of the film's own reality for the sake of what seems a meaningless wink, which problem is compounded further by having a voiceover of Burroughs, apropos of absolutely nothing, reading about psychic vampires, inserted into the film (I guess it's done to give some tenuous sense that Burroughs' work has anything to do with the ideas in Rabid; but it doesn't, that I could see, save for the connection to Cronenberg - or at least one of his other films, with not much bearing on this one). 

And speaking of distracting fangirl winking, the red-gowned operation scene lifted directly from Dead Ringers also seemed unnecessary and irrelevant. Like, why not stick some car crash fetishization, telepods, and sex parasites in there, too? (Or better yet: remake one film at a time...?).

There's also a rather ridiculous before-and-after transition from Rose being completely disfigured to being completely healed, within a few minutes of screen time, which doesn't do much to help suspend disbelief, to invest you in her journey, or create any sort of illusion that we're dealing with something remotely scientifically or medically possible. 

But the hell of it is, that's all from the first half of the film, which is the better of the halves. Annoying as all the above is, there was at least a solid, pathos-generating performance by their lead actor, Laura Vandervoort, to get you through it, and a higher level of cinematic craft and restraint than I've seen the Soskas muster before. There was, too, some interesting potential to re-locating the film within the fashion industry, and even a FRESH IDEA in the film, something not present in the Cronenberg film, of having Rose go from shy, self-doubting vegan wallflower to confident, bloodsucking success as the result of her "transformation." In Cronenberg's film, Rose seems beautiful and confident both before and after her surgery; we don't really get to know her that well prior to the motorcycle accident, but there's really no "before and after," no sense that the operation changes her character in any meaningful way, and it was an interesting thing for the Soskas to do, to give us some time with Rose before things change.  

Sadly, if there's ultimately any coherent through-line about beauty and self-confidence and fashion and the female, if there's any meaningful connection between Rose's transformation and the social disorder that erupts in her wake, if, in fact, there's any theme at all developed, it gets lost in the flailing tentacles, body horror grossouts, and mood of general excess in the film's second half. While there is one great scene at a bar where the Soskas use a sort of freeze-frame effect to highlight the spread of the virus in the film, you never really feel that social order is threatened, or even that the plague that erupts is rabies; while we do see one or two people with froth on their lips, one of the "infected" seems to become some sort of mutant zombie, with a giant misshapen head and a stagger that out-Frankensteins Frankenstein's. Rose's armpit tentacle, too - a small, stiff, phallic prong in the original - when it finally appears, is a couple meters long and given to flailing, reminding me of the killer plant tendrils in some 60's Filipino exploitation film I saw (Brides of Blood, I think). Wriggling tentacles in horror movies generally rate down there in terms of realism with the floppy rubber bats in Hammer horror films; while generally I want to like practical effects, it's been awhile since I've seen special effects as bad as these in a contemporary film. Weirdest, there isn't even a need for the tentacle; while in the original film, it's Rose's feeding tube, all her early attacks in the Soskas' film are done simply by biting her victims, vampire-style, so when the tentacle suddenly DOES make its appearance, it's entirely of a what-the-fuck-is-THAT nature. Maybe it's meant to be campy? ...or maybe it reflects a really juvenile sense that the point of horror movies IS silly grossouts and gore, not subversive and provocative ideas and harrowing emotional experiences...? 

There are plenty of silly grossouts and gore in the film's second half, mind you, so maybe there's an audience for films like Rabid. Maybe this is some millennial's idea of fun. It certainly seems like the Soskas were having fun with this film - more than I did, to be sure. 

I mean, I still kinda want to like the idea of the Soska Sisters and their brand and their success. I don't want there to be hard feelings, particularly since the last time I saw the Soskas in person, they were toting an axe. But jeezus, I kinda wish they'd either left Cronenberg alone, or done a little bit of a better job making sure there was a point to this remake. Wasn't one that I could see. 

Sigh.