Australia
Review: JA Kerswell
This veritable slice of Aussie what-the-fuckery started in 1998, wrapped in 2002, but commonly lists a 1999 release date. One-half teen slasher and one-half gonzo mad doctor freakout. A teenage girl’s friends are brutally murdered by a gas mask-wearing lunatic, and then at the film’s halfway point she is kidnapped by a religious cult who attempts to reattach her to her Siamese twin. Yes, really.
In a prologue inexplicably shot in sepia like a silent movie (only with a blast of heavy metal on the soundtrack), Melinda (Emma Grasso) watches a man in a gas mask chop her mother in half with a ceremonial sword whilst she does her homework. One year later, seemingly recovered from her ordeal, Melinda has new hobbies, like pointing out amputees to her boyfriend whilst sunbathing on the beach. She also throws herself a birthday party, where she asks all her guests—also inexplicably—to not buy her a present, but to steal a gift from a hotel foyer. The same night the gas-masked killer returns (maybe he was the hotel’s bellboy) and slays two of her friends outside the party.
Melinda and her group are understandably as distraught as their acting chops will allow, but the killer starts to off more of them until the remaining five have the bright idea to hotfoot it out of the city and all its police protection and head to Melinda’s father’s falling-down house in the middle of nowhere. Before they get there, two are taken out by a bunch of dynamite strapped to their car by the killer, who is now seemingly channeling Wile E. Coyote. In a revelation that will come as little surprise to anyone but Melinda and the other two survivors, the killer is waiting for them at her father’s place. However, what perhaps is a surprise is that he’s brought along a machine gun! Melinda survives the spray of bullets, only to be tackled and captured by the killer, who turns out to be her long-lost brother (Jay Gallagher), whom she was surgically removed from at birth …
Where to start? The next half pretty much jettisons the slasher movie for a mad-medic melee (that sometimes feels like a dollar-store version of Ken Russell’s THE DEVILS (1971)), where Dr. Hatcher (David Vallon) rants about God, attaches Melinda back to her brother with tubes, whilst trying to brainwash her into being part of his cult of intellectually delayed people. Admittedly, this sharp left turn is at least novel. However, so much mumbo jumbo is spouted, and none of it really makes any sense (or perhaps I was past caring). There never is a satisfactory explanation why all of Melinda’s friends had to die, nor really why the doctor is doing any of this. Grasso as Melinda isn’t half bad after she gets past her bland Final Girl in a Julie James strap top. Everyone else is at least enthusiastic, if not necessarily talented. A handful of striking shots, and the way Grasso is lit like a film noir femme fatale during the party scenes, suggest ambition. Although the constant flashing to black and white from color seems little more than a pretentious contrivance. But ultimately, after the halfway point, it’s more fever-dream than movie, and is more likely to irritate than entertain.
In some ways, given the Siamese twin theme, it makes a twisted kind of sense to have two halves of TO BECOME ONE be so different and in a better film that might have paid off. As it is, it feels like you’re getting shortchanged if you were expecting an Aussie post-SCREAM slasher movie. The killer’s look not only channels MY BLOODY VALENTINE (1981), but also the fellow antipodean BAD BOY BUBBY (1993)—with the second half perhaps paying a nod to DEAD KIDS (1981). The movie has some halfway decent gore gags and, perhaps in a scatological tribute to the FRIDAY THE 13TH series, the camera keeps panning back to a character straining to take a dump. Oh, and it throws in a Scottish Crazy Ralph character who isn’t taking a dump.
As mentioned, it started filming in 1998 and wrapped in 2002 (on a reported budget of $2,000); it was shot on 16mm, with some extra footage on a then-fledgling digital cinema camera. The newly restored version now streaming states that a planned cinema release was pulled when the distributor went bankrupt. Although it’s hard to see how TO BECOME ONE would have had a successful run in theatres.
The first half is clunky and often amateurish, but has some fun moments. The second half turns into an incoherent endurance test. Not a movie to become attached to.
BODY COUNT 10:
Female 6 / Male 4
TO BECOME ONE (1999) - trailer
