Otto; or, Up With Dead People
Director: Bruce La Bruce
Year Released: 2008
Rating: 1.5
"Undead" emo boy Otto (Jey Crisfar, looking like Josh Hartnett) wanders aimlessly around Germany where he gets recruited to participate in a documentary, feasts on road kill and chews up some men: this isn't Romero's world of global panic, it's actually kind of common. The entire "outsider" concept (homosexuals and animated corpses both shunned by the general public) is obvious enough and a clever starting point, but this movie does little beyond that single dimension: it has its transgressive moments (after a night of sex and cannibalism the mutilated victim asks Our Hero if he'll ever see him again) but it's also easily sidetracked and curiously detached, quite literally a Movie About Shuffling. Otto shuffles here in his oversized boots and hoodie, he shuffles there, he sits down, he looks forlorn. When it's revealed that he's not dead in any literal sense - it's a metaphor for feeling alone and defeated after a bad breakup - I can only reiterate what I'd say to a similar figure in a mainstream movie about broken young love: get over yourself.
