Tone-Deaf

A while back, I stumbled upon the movie Excision. That was a twisted fever dream of a movie with one hell of a memorable ending. It instantly became one of those "let's see what else the director has done" kind of movies, because it was so different from anything else. So I watched another one of Richards Bates Jr's movies, Suburban Gothic, and it was a lot of fun. Not as unique -- kind of a buddy-cop version of The Frighteners, but more dry and acidic in its humor -- but still enjoyable. That was enough to confirm that Bates was a director I'd follow. So here we have another of his movies, Tone-Deaf. Like all Bates' movies, they defy genre categorization. Horror-comedy is the simplest way to put it, but Bates puts his distinctive stamp on everything he does that always makes a movie more than just a couple tags, and Tone-Deaf is no different. To describe a Bates movie is to reduce it to elements. Simply saying "a Millennial woman, recently fired from her job, rents a house for a weekend getaway that is owned by a Boomer who is failing to hide psychotic tendencies" is the tip of the iceberg. The magic of a Bates movie is how the ingredients come together, not the individual elements themselves. That being said, Tone-Deaf is my least favorite of his movies so far. It's definitely not a bad movie. Amanda Crew is fun as Olive, the movie's protagonist, and Robert Patrick excels as Harvey, the movie's bad guy. They are the linchpins in this generational battle, and they more than do their part. As always, there's a ton of side characters in a Bates movie, and they're a lot of fun too, especially Kim Delaney as Olive's hippie mom. The title of the movie is a nice touch, too, as it both refers to Olive's painfully awful piano playing (which is an important plot element), and how people in generations tend to become insulated in their bubbles and can't fathom listening to anything outside of it. It's a shame, then, that that aspect never materializes beyond a literal battle of generations. There was a chance here to do some radical things here, touching on how the generations plug their ears and refuse to consider value in anything outside of their preferred circle, but Tone-Deaf plays it surprisingly simple and straight-forward. This by no means derails the movie or anything, but it feels like a missed opportunity. This is especially true when the movie has a lot of unnecessary fluff. There's a scene with Harvey's son, and it is his ONLY scene. Olive has hallucinations of some weird, freaky stuff that never gets explained. There's a key moment in the finale where Olive's mom is racing to save her and the tire on her car blows out; the movie builds up the driver's reveal to be something, and it isn't anything at all. My first inclination would be that it was padding to get the movie to that 90 minute threshold, but another of his movies, King Knight, clocks it at 78 minutes with credits. I don't see why this needed stuffing, especially when that time could've fleshed out the key themes. This is still a fun movie, albeit probably Bates' least inventive and unique. That's not a crime, I guess -- Radiohead stopped being innovative after In Rainbows, and Spielberg has coasted on reputation for decades -- but it does make the movie stand out as the lesser of his works. But it's worth it to see Patrick as a deranged Baby Boomer grumbling about YouTube and avocado toast, and Crew be a lovely ball of neurotic energy, and their clash at the end. Tone-Deaf is like getting a Michelin-star chef to make you a grilled cheese sandwich. I'm sure it'll be the best damned grilled cheese sandwich you've ever had, but it's still a grilled cheese sandwich. You know they're capable of more.