Pin...

Pin is kind of a contradiction. It feels like there’s a lot when you write it down, but there isn’t when you watch it. It’s about a boy, Leon, that develops an unhealthy attachment to an anatomical doll as a child, and what happens with his mental health as the attachment grows as he grows up. But there’s a lot more … and yet there isn’t. There’s also his parents — his mother who pretty much refuses to allow Leon to have friends over or socialize, and the dad, who is a doctor and uses ventriloquism to make Pin (the doll) talk to his kids, which is how Pin becomes Leon’s only friend. There’s the sister, who for some reason seems sexually curious at the age of 9, and you can guess how that goes. I could go on and on with the plot elements that come in, but if it sounds really busy, it isn’t. This is a sssssssllllllllooooooooowwwwwww burn psychological horror movie, and while it is interesting and has some good performances, it’s also a bit of an empty movie. It’s a lot of arguments and family drama. A lot. There’s a lot of themes that are sort of explored in Pin. Leon has a Whitman’s sampler of mental health issues — paranoid schizophrenia, a violent aversion to sex, a potentially incestuous obsession with his sister, and more — and Pin seems to be saying all of these were caused by trigger events. Some mental health issues can be created like that, but some cannot, and it leads to this dissonance where Leon is portrayed both as a victim and a perpetrator. I guess that’s more realistic — life is nuanced, nobody is A or B all the time — but the way the movie goes about it is less layered and more like a light switch flipped at the convenience of the moment. And the movie waits way too long to give Ursula motivation to put up with his problems instead of taking steps … but the reasoning makes sense, so, again, it makes sense, just done clumsily. It also means that all the movie’s atmosphere and tension come from Leon, which also means it is heavily focused on his mood swings. Pin does a good job showing how his mental health situation deteriorates as a teenager, but it’s also kind of already in a terrible place, and the signs we see are more just new ways for it manifest. It’s not the slow pulling back of layers like Norman Bates, which makes all the time the audience have to spend with him a bit of a challenge. Less excusable than the movie’s off-kilter balance is the technical aspect. This has a truly wonky score that feels pulled out of a stock bin but randomly assigned to scenes, and the camerawork and direction is often Full Moon levels of mediocre. The acting and weird story and overall atmosphere usually lift this movie up above its low-budget ineptitude, but usually implies there’s times where it doesn’t, and when it doesn’t … woof, it really breaks the moment. It may seem like I’ve got more negative to say than positive. I did like this movie. It’s weird and creepy, and doesn’t go where you think it will, and may be as crazy as its lead character. I think it’s worth watching for a slower, more cerebral horror movie, almost Hitchcockian. Whether that’s the focused, intelligent Hitchcock of Psycho, or the messy, ambitiously clumsy Hitchcock of Marnie is your call.