Harpoon is a slippery eel of a movie, actually more of an idea of a movie, a wisp of a dream, like a teenager slagging off on his homework til the production house asks him when we can expect to see some of those final drafts, Eric, it’s been ten months and we really need to rush something out for Oscar season, otherwise your budget’s gonna get slashed and you’re going to have to explain to the sound editors why there’s no paycheck for Christmas, do you really want that, do you, Eric?
I’m violating some basic rules in order to review this movie that went directly to streaming in November of last year, but I feel like 1) in order to carry on with the theme of C-list, sexploitative body horror, 2) the certainty with which I have that this will become an instant classic in these End Times, and 3) the fact that I thought this was going to be a very, very different movie are reasons that we can temporarily break our rule in order to do a deep dive into Harpoon.
First off, it’s important to mention the narrator of this movie is played by Brett Gelman, everyone’s first pick to play an asshole whether its in Netflix’s Stranger Things or Netflix’s Love or Amazon’s Fleabag. For whatever reason when I was trying to think of a dumb recent horror film to watch and his name popped up with a bunch of 20 somethings I thought, I will enjoy this combination of opposites, like watching a sweaty mole wrestle three pristine lizard eggs into submission. Brett Gelman is not featured as a character in this movie, however. At no point is his point of view explained. He is not one of the characters in the future or the past. He is no one’s “head voice,” as in the case of Elijah Wood in Wilfred or the Hormone Monster Maury in Big Mouth. He doesn’t show up later to rescue any of the kids or as the father of a character. Brett Gelman is, as far as I can tell, shooting from the hip, calling the shots, and making shit up about character’s backstories and the superstitions of the high seas whenever he wants to.
After looking through some lists of the worst horror films of the year, I narrowed in on Harpoon and then read this portentously laconic synopsis from IMDb: “Rivalries, dark secrets, and sexual tension emerge when three best friends find themselves stranded on a yacht in the middle of the ocean desperate for survival.” So I naturally assumed that this movie would feature sex or at least sexual creatures. Instead, the film takes big risks by featuring two young boys whose most ardent struggle in life seems to be trying to grow out what meager facial hair they can before murdering each other on the high seas. And though the three twenty-somethings are locked in an erotic triangle, the film lacks any chemistry between the characters, probably because (spoiler) it relies heavily on a twist in which the boy next door that we’re meant to root for is, in fact, the boy next door who stabbed a pregnant ex gf to death in order to help out his rich best friend Rich (ughhhhhh second movie in a week that used this stupid pun, but at least this movie found a way to make it work) because otherwise Rich would break up with the girl Jonah’s been pining after for years even though she would rather date Rich. Phew. It doesn’t help that Rich is also the son of a mob boss who has definitely killed some people. Also, he’s been cheating on Sasha consistently after he was caught doing so last year.
This point on Sasha’s sexual fidelity is actually of interest to Friend and me. First off, why isn’t Sasha more angry that Jonah has kept her in the dark about her boyfriend and his best friend’s sexual infidelity? She reacts strongly to the fact that Rich has been lying but doesn’t dwell very much on the fact that Jonah’s been complicit. The false equivalence (this term seems to be cropping up more lately) that Rich draws between his own patterns of infidelity and the admission by Jonah and Sasha that they’ve slept together once doesn’t seem all that fair or measured. Rich’s character pingpongs between icy cool and murderous rage for a lot of this movie, and, don’t get me wrong, he’s reminiscent of a young Charlie Hunnam (praise be) when he’s being badass, but he lacks the charm and swagger of a should-be-equal foil to Jonah. Sasha’s two choices for romance seem to be creep and brute, which feels a little stupid, but maybe that is the core of this suspense movie, the feeling of being trapped between two equally unappealing choices.
Speaking of unappealing, probably the only thing that kept this movie from being truly great was the fact that the folley artist was given horse tranquilizers before she started work on the final cut. A loud, delayed glass break sound as Jonah–ever-so-lightly–tosses a family photo into a cardboard box foreshadows some harder-to-miss sound effects, like the GLUG-GLUG-GLUGGING of the teaspoon of seagull blood each of our trio sips out of a Tupperware container. (I was instantly transported back to Swallow, wondering what sumptuous cranberry sauce these actors were encouraged to imagine as blood.) On a whole, these sound mishaps speak to a larger truth about Harpoon: this movie is better to watch if you know it’s bad going in–if you’re aware that Rich is going to try to act his heart out “treading water” in 3ft of water with shallow sandbars in all directions, if you’re already on board (so to speak) with the fact that the entirety of the movie will be references to past events that we have no knowledge of or flashbacks to, if you know that there are going to be multiple straw-picking scenes in a row (first to choose who to eat, then who to kill, including the person being eaten). It’s important that the viewer of this movie knows that the harpoon isn’t going to be a major element of the movie (Friend spoke up here to say, “It was part of the inciting incident,” to which I respond, I guess you would’ve been fine if Finding Nemo had been about all of the fun stuff that Marlin and Nemo did after they reunited, if Toy Story was about Andy’s mom’s struggle to make rent every month on her own, if Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure had eventually spun off into a film about Rufus’s life in the future). Sorry, I blacked out for a moment.
Harpoon is an excellent movie for anyone who needs something to listen to while sanitizing their groceries, or in lieu of sitting on the beach with friends for the next few months. When you said you wouldn’t see this movie “not in a million years, or only after I’d been unemployed for two weeks,” here is your chance.
