Review: Tusk

Improbably inspired by a classified ad seeking a person willing to dress up in a walrus costume in exchange for free room and board, and expanded during his Smodcast podcast with co-host Scott Mosier, Kevin Smith's Tusk is not only the most out-there work of his career but also, in many ways, the best thing he has ever done.

Wallace Bryton (Justin Long) and Teddy Craft (Haley Joel Osment) are hosts of a popular podcast that revels in making fun of people they find on YouTube. Wallace travels to Manitoba to interview one such YouTube sensation only to discover that is interviewee has committed suicide. Determined not to let his trip go to waste, he sets out to meet one Howard Howe (Michael Parks), an invalid whose adventurous life promises material for the podcast.

Howe proves to be a raconteur of the highest order, ensorcelling the wisecracking Wallace with his tales of meeting Hemingway and being lost at sea after his ship collided with an iceberg and disappeared into the Russian sea. Alone in the vast waters, he swam and swam through the night until he reached shore. There he met his saviour, a walrus he named Mr. Tusk with whom he spent six of the happiest months of his life. "I've never known such a fulfilling frienship with anyone, human or otherwise," Howe confesses.

Wallace soon discovers the lengths to which Howe will go to relive those blissful times with his mammalian friend. After Howe drugs him and immobilises him in a wheelchair, he reveals his intentions to Wallace: he has been constructing a very realistic walrus suit which he intends to fit on Wallace. "Your life as you know it is over," he tells his captive. "If you wish to continue living, you'll be a walrus or you'll be nothing at all."

Tusk is certainly not without Smith's trademark mix of highbrow references (Coleridge and Tennyson are among the quoted) and lowbrow scatalogical humour (Johnny Depp, billed as Guy Lapointe, would rather avoid the effects of Canadian poutine). The New Jersey native also pokes fun at our friends in the Great White North, with a border agent listing the Cana-do's and Cana-don'ts for Wallace's edification: don't go telling a Canadian you don't follow hockey; Canadians aren't nice, they're optimistic; and Canadians don't get sad. "Sadness was made by the U.S.A."

The humour takes a back seat once the more creepy and gruesome elements of the film take over. Flashes of Dead of Winter, Boxing Helena, Misery, and Frankenstein scramble through the mind as Howe slowly but surely reconstructs Wallace into his beloved Mr. Tusk. The sight of Wallace as Mr. Tusk is jawdroppingly freakish - very much an homage to Tod Browning's 1932 masterpiece Freaks. (American Horror Story: Freak Show has nothing on this shocking tale of lust, greed and betrayal amongst the deformed denizens f a circus sideshow.) Here is a young man devoid of limbs and tongue, outfitted in flippers and tusks, unable to express his horror and terror at his new condition except in braying wails.

It's to both Long and Parks's credit that they elicit sympathy for fairly unsympathetic characters. Wallace cheats repeatedly on his beautiful girlfriend Ally (Genesis Rodriguez), and one could call his plight a comeuppance - here's th exploiter of the freaks now turned into an oddity himself. Yet does anyone deserve this fate, even if Parks somehow makes you understand the very human but misguided motivations behind Howe's monstrous behaviour? With these two actors and a tremendously assured Smith at the helm, Tusk delivers the laughs, the horror and an unexpectedly heartbreaking conclusion.

Tusk

Directed by: Kevin Smith

Written by: Kevin Smith

Starring: Justin Long, Michael Parks, Haley Joel Osment, Genesis Rodriguez, Johnny Depp (billed as Guy Lapointe)