I’ve never suffered a serious head injury, but I think I might know what it’s like. Because I’ve seen Things, a lower-than-low budget cinematic sledgehammer to the frontal lobe. One-film wonder auteurs Andrew Jordan and Barry J. Gillis’s only ambition, it seems, was to make the video stores of 1989 a little more bloody with their homemade monster movie. In true horror film fashion though, they tripped and fell and ripped open a wormhole to another dimension where nothing makes sense and all rules of the normal world no longer apply.
This is a film with no regard for conventional methods of storytelling, acting, editing, lighting, sandwich-making, beer-drinking and coat-hanging. So, information is a little iffy, but I THINK the plot goes something like this: a couple who can’t have children use an experimental fertility treatment that results in the woman giving birth to killer creatures that look like over-sized ants. The little beasts then proceed to cause trouble one late night for a couple of fat guys who seem to have been drinking since noon.
Director Andrew Jordan handles this simple scenario like he’s never seen a movie before. A blind man could compose better shots. A kid with two VCRs could edit with more skill. Jordan’s shots rarely fit next to each other (two shots in the same scene will have very different lighting). He never gives us enough detail to understand why anything—and I do mean ANYTHING—is happening. The pace isn’t merely slow; it’s DRUNK and the room is starting to spin.
Funny thing though is that it’s pretty entertaining, too. It’s a movie full of “wrong” decisions and, as such, there’s something adorable about it—even the scene where a guy plucks out another guy’s eyeball. I dare you to not be mesmerized. I challenge you to not be flummoxed. I implore you to help me figure out why the main characters store their coats in the kitchen freezer.
As a truly transporting experience, Things has aged remarkably well. Thirty years later, now that we all have high-definition cameras on our cellphones and pretty much anyone can have their own decent-looking television show on Youtube, this hazy, crazy, murky mess from 1989 is weirder and drunker than ever. It easily earns a place on the Great Bad Movie top shelf.