Otis and The Cottage: Comedy and Gore: Getting a Problematic Recipe Right

Reviewer: James van Maanen

Otis: Rating (out of 5): **

The Cottage: Rating (out of 5): ***½

Mixing comedy and gore is usually a tricky thing. Shaun of the Dead got it right, but that was also a kind of satire of British middle class mores, in addition to the aforesaid c&g. Many slasher movies have their moments of humor but few are what you could call comedies. The two films reviewed here definitely attempt the mix -- one (The Cottage) more successfully than the other (Otis).

The latter movie gets it right about one-third of the time, with the titular character given to kidnapping nubile young blonds, whom he then attempts to brainwash into becoming his "girl." The film begins with his latest in a string, who, within minutes, comes to a bad end. And then it's on the next, this time a member of middle-class family peopled by actors such as Illeana Douglas, Daniel Stern, Jared Kusnitz and Ashley Johnson. Jere Burns (more familiar as a TV actor) plays the investigating officer, Tracy Scoggins makes a niftily tawdry TV news reporter and Kevin Pollak is Otis' pissed-off brother. Most of these actors have a moment of two in which to shine but many more in which they look either lost or in-over-their-head, due to a so-so script by Erik Jendresen and Thomas Schnauz and direction from Tony Krantz that never finds its tone and tends to overdo rather than underplay, which would have been helpful, given material such as this. (The exception is Ms. Scoggins, who seems nearly dead-on during her two or three scenes.) Krantz fared much better by last year's creepy hospital fantasy/thriller Sublime.)

What the movie does have going for it is surprise. For awhile, at least. It has one quite suspenseful scene: an escape you just know is not going to happen. And then the film simply changes direction--for, as it turns out, the very much worse. This leads to the gore--which is enormous, utterly predictable and not particularly believable (although it is more so than the silly aftermath). Unfortunately, once Otis begins its downhill roll, nothing impedes it.

The Cottage, on the other hand, begins rather quietly, as two characters who seem to be related in some fashion arrive in the hinterlands and have evidently committed a crime. Banter and arguing ensue; one tells the other to go out to the car and bring in the milk, and--boom--the film takes off and never really stops until it's over. Small surprise follows small surprise, and you find yourself chuckling at the quite naughty goings-on that grow worse and worse until you are laughing at utterly unconscionable stuff, including gore that normally might send you to the fast-forward button. Instead, you grin, guffaw and grimace--not always in that order.

The laughter is due primarily to the clever manner in which British writer/director Paul Andrew Williams doles out his information, and to a very good cast who pulls out all the stops and give Williams' screenplay its due. Especially fine are Reece Shearsmith, as a timid fellow with a phobia for moths (a movie "first," perhaps?) who acts with such dead-on reality and comic sense that he approaches brilliance, and Jennifer Ellison, who gifts her character Tracy with a never-let-up nastiness that begins with a hilarious moment of surprise and shock and simply gets better and funnier from there. Also quite good is Steve O'Donnell as a roly-poly accomplice who takes the rather bland line, "Don't be long" and turns it into a something funny, charming and sad. But the ostensible "star" of the movie is the ubiquitous-since-Lord of the Rings Andy Serkis (King Kong, The Prestige, Extraordinary Rendition, Longford). This fellow, always good, is usually cast as a bad guy. Here, he's that plus the straight man, which allows him little of the film's distinctive humor. That his performance comes through intact is a measure of Serkis' stalwart abilities.