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 he New Zealand movie "Scarfies" is a good movie
only if you can forgive its farcical and truly terrible ending. The film, about
5 college students who discover an elaborate marijuana stash growing in the
basement of their rundown house, requires you to take one big leap of faith.
It's this: Upon discovering the marijuana, our students, one of whom wants to
attend law school, decides on the spot -- and I mean on the spot -- that
they should sell the pot, thus officially becoming drug dealers. Now, if this
seems completely beyond the realm of reason to you, then the rest of
"Scarfies" will be irrelevant.
Jon Brazier plays Kevin, the rundown building's original
owner, who returns from whereabouts unknown to discover his stash gone. Making
matters worst, the rightfully ticked off crook finds out that the college kids
have sold his plants at a discount! And before you can say, "Wait a
minute, didn't I see this in 'Suicide
Kings' already?" the kids have the crook tied up in a chair, has super
glued his lips and hands together, and between bouts of torturing him in various
ways, they argue relentlessly with each other about this and that and everything
else. Meanwhile, the crook resorts to mind games.
The whole thing was so familiar I kept wondering when Denis
Leary was going to show up to save the day. The college kids are played by Willa
O'Neill as Emma, who along with Scott (Neill Rea) seems to be the only people
with a modicum of common sense. There's bad boy Alex (Taika Cohen), rich girl
Nicola (Ashleigh Seagar), and awkward virgin Graham (Charlie Bleakley). Through
the course of the film, Graham reveals his puppy dog crush on Nicola, who is too
busy waking up the neighborhood with wild and loud sex with bad boy Alex to
notice.
Soon, Graham's more sadistic side shows up when he invents
an elaborate electrical headgear for Kevin to wear so they can torture him while
watching him on a TV screen. Gee, sounds fun. And we're supposed to like these
sadistic bastards? If it sounds as if our college kids are not very sympathetic,
that's because they're arrogant, selfish, and just generally unlikable people.
Only Emma and Scott come close to provoking sympathy, but even they have moments
where they are simply crass. All the while, Jon Brazier's crook is made to
suffer at the hands of his captors.
"Scarfies" plays out as a comedy for its first 30
minutes, but becomes a bit of a black comedy for the next 30 minutes, only to
shift into completely farcical territory for the final 20 minutes. The ending is
ridiculous and takes the easy road out. Not only does the whole "holding
the guy captive and torturing him for days on end in the basement" thing
gets all cleaned up nice and tidy, but the college kids never get any
comeuppance. Oh sure, some of them gets internally "messed up" by what
they did to poor Kevin, but I'd much rather see them get externally
messed up instead, if you know what I mean.
A lot of "Scarfies" is highly recommended, but
only if you ignore some very obvious questions. Such as: How is it that a
two-story house located at what appears to be prime real estate has been
abandoned? Or how about the fact that these supposed college kids never seem to
go to school, except for one scene where we see Emma in class for about a couple
of seconds? But being that "Scarfies" is mostly black comedy, we
aren't meant to really ask questions.
Still, the film is a bit of a letdown, especially
considering its outrageously tidy ending. Except for one character getting
stabbed in the chest, these wholly unlikable kids come out of the whole thing
with nary a scratch. Maybe I'm just not as forgiving as your regular Kiwi
audience, but that reeks of a cheat.
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