Alyce Kills

“I had you all wrong, at first. I thought you were a psycho bitch.”

This is what a testosterone fitness jughead says to Alyce, not knowing that his first impression was actually accurate.

 

I know the director, Jay Lee, from Zombie Strippers! It was a film I found rather harmless R-rated brain candy for the zombie crowd. Alyce Kills is a lot darker, but this still has that razor’s edge of comedy; it’s a fine line, and a balancing act that can cause many a horror / cult film to fall prey to the unevens if not successful.

It is kind of interesting how we find our ways to certain movies. I was watching Hatchet last week, and Tamara Feldman was the heroine of the supporting cast (later replaced by Danielle Harris of Halloween 4 fame) in that film. Her performance or character wasn’t particularly newsworthy but I was curious if she had starred in anything else horror-related. I noticed Alyce Kills on her resume, and the film was available on Netflix, so I decided to give it a go. Feldman really factors very little to the overall film but her fate is what works as a catalyst in Alyce’s mental deterioration.

This is every bit one of those “dark descent” character movies. The horror genre is packed full of them, too. The films featuring female characters falling apart at the seams particularly fascinate me. I usually treasure performances in these types of roles because actresses capable enough can really come into their own and find the depths that exist in women who aren’t altogether evil but convey how darkness can envelope them at their most psychologically vulnerable.

Alyce definitely is a character on that path of self-destruction. When she accidentally pushes her friend (both are rather inebriated after clubbing, with a run-in of Tamara’s cheating boyfriend resulting in plenty of melo-dramatics) over the ledge of a multi-story building, it sets off a chain of events that result in Alyce standing in her apartment with a battered and bloody face looking at police and her building’s super. That’s where it ends, but the beginnings show Alyce stuck in a job computing numbers for a company. Her boss is an antagonist with little regard for her. It isn’t a surprise this ends with unemployment. Soon comes an uneasy “relationship” with a speed-talking, live-wire drug dealer who wants sexual favors (mainly blowjobs) for Ecstasy and coke. Drinking also exists in Alyce’s life, but once she murders her friend with a pillow there’s no turning back and total darkness soon engulfs her. Guys in her bedroom see that darkside bloom and are soon afraid of her.

 

The film is like the building volcanic eruption of Alyce’s violent catharsis. Those who have wronged her somehow find unfortunate ends. There’s an accumulation effect that results in all the absurd bloodshed and over-the-top gruesome display. The drug dealer (and his wasted buddies who crash at his pad), the boyfriend of her best friend (the cheater), the other girl, and (almost) the boss who got her fired from her job. Each of these people had a helping hand in the eventual decline of Alyce’s mental state. Ultimately, though, it was the accidental plunge from the building that ignited all of this. It was probably always there, though. We see early on that Alyce watched news reports (a collage of clips and such taken from video footage) from a film projector. A little later in the film (after she suffocated her friend in the hospital and fell into drugs) Alyce shows us she’s so far gone that she masturbates and gropes herself while watching that same footage. The collapse of society, in the world at large, turns her on. It is shot by Jay Lee in a highly eroticized fashion, in a quick-edit style that never quite gets too explicit yet still is highly charged and provocative.

The “disposal of body” scene at the end before Alyce pays one final visit to the druggies is absolutely grotesque and played for all the black humor it can muster. When you see a severed hand placed in a microwave and later a blender in the hopes of making it easier to get rid of down a garbage disposal, there’s an awareness that this whole part of the film has tonally went off the rails never to return. Using a bat to crush a body so it can be easier to dispose of, with Alyce tossing organs and bloody flesh off to the side (as well as, cleaning flesh from the bone; we see here that bone doesn’t chop up in a garbage disposal!), there’s little doubt that Jay Lee and company decided to let their movie just wallow in the grue. The gun use in the drug dealer’s lair (with Russian roulette and a dead brother’s ashes from an urn factoring into the event as it transpires) has plenty of blood spray and mayhem. Just wait until you see her mockingly sitting in a chair as a victim is pleading for help (“Repetitive.” “Pathetic.”) and attempting to keep his guts from spilling out his stomach after she stabs him. The glasses, hair pinned up, and rubber cleaning gloves as she crosses her legs and takes a couple hits from a ciggie all comfy and absent emotionally from the extremities of her killing spree; Alyce becomes settled into her role and enjoys it.

 

The film up until dealt with her haunted by the ghost of her friend, guilt from causing the fall, coming to terms with how to alleviate the burden, attending a funeral where the family wanted her to leave, embracing the wicked, and executing “loose ends”. She was her own monster, but certain people provoking her psychopathy led to their own demise. Whether you can make it through a lot of the descent--bits where she acts on a bit of perverse kink that exists after having the orgasm to worldly chaos, the drug use and side-effects, banter and unease with the druggies, going through a collection of feelings (misery, sadness, bliss, and lunacy) as she travels into the abyss--to get to the ultra-violence may determine if Alyce Kills works for you or not. Jade Dornfeld in the lead is new to me. She has a part that requires the Point A to Point Z approach where her character is one place when the film starts and runs through the gamut until she’s completely changed, altered by the path she chooses. I dug her.