UK Release Date: 02-11-2007
Starring: Scott Speedman, Wes Bentley, Taryn Manning
UK Certificate: 18
Director: Allan Moyle
Country: US/Canada

Dexter (Scott Speedman) and Royce (Wes Bentley) are a couple of junkies forced into selling some gear to pay off their drug debts; Royce’s girlfriend and hooker-in-denial (Taryn Manning) ODs on the stash and, presuming her to be dead, they attempt to bury her in the boiler room of a locked drive-in theatre, only for her to come back to life in the middle of a sacrificial ritual performed by a cult of beginner Satanists. The heroes, girlfriend, dealer, Satanists and a gang of mediæval re-enactor dwarves spend the long winter night chasing each other through Weedsville, as the various plot strands weave manically around, occasionally intersecting and just managing to restrain themselves from careering off into complete chaos, before they pull off what all along seems an impossible feat by converging in a fantastically ridiculous finale. The pace is frenetic, the dialogue witty (and among a certain audience, no doubt infinitely quotable), and the characters endearingly and perspicaciously drawn, from more minor figures like the dwarf mall security guard and the pretentious Satanists to the messed-up but hugely sympathetic central trio. The emotional warmth of the film, its strange honesty, and the way the camera shares the protagonists’ point of view and intoxication, all serve to draw the viewers in and make us feel we are on their trip with them. But if we are swept along with the sheer joyful exhilaration of it all, this is a trip with a destination, a mythical journey about a hero looking for redemption: the tone is hopeful, the friends – and by extension the viewer, if in an appropriate state of mind – learn something about how to see themselves and the world anew.

Moyle wrote a 10-page manifesto to persuade the film’s potential financiers that this wasn’t a pro-drug movie; but though the ending is ambiguous, Weirdsville is that rare movie brave enough to acknowledge that people take drugs for fun, and it seems clear where Moyle’s sympathies lie. Smart, funny, optimistic and high on an alternative worldview, Weirdsville is surely destined to be a cult hit amongst students when it comes out on DVD. Plus, it features what is possibly film’s most creative use of a garden gnome prop ever.

Trailer

Weirdsville MySpace