Jason Momoa and Suki Waterhouse (Neon)
Imagine you’re wandering through a post-apocalyptic land south of Texas when you’re kidnapped and kept alive while a gang of cannibals cuts off your arm and a leg. If you had the means, you’d probably want to kill them all.
This is what happens to Arlen (Suki Waterhouse) in The Bad Batch, which veers from ridiculous to fascinating and back in the space of two stormy hours.
Did I mention Keanu Reeves plays a post-apocalyptic rave guru who calls himself The Dream?
Cannibal movies generally evoke an era of seedy downtown theaters where patrons watched scratchy film prints of questionable movies from grimy, run-down seats. But The Bad Batch elevates the Z-movie, with long stretches without dialogue and a patient pace that at times suggests Iranian cinema.
Which makes sense. Director Ana Lily Amirpour was born in the UK to Iranian parents, and her first feature A Girl Walks Alone at Night was described as an “Iranian vampire spaghetti western.” More than her stylish if meandering debut, Batch delivers an impressive spectacle, pausing for nods to Lawrence of Arabia along the way to a cautionary tale that comes off like Mad Max: Fury Road on quaaludes.
After being left with just her right arm and right leg, Arlen escapes the cannibal camp on a skateboard, which gives you an idea of the tonal tightrope Amirpour walks, delicately threading horror and dry comedy.
For the sweet time this movie takes, character development isn’t exactly complex, but it’s there. After getting fitted with a prosthetic leg, Arlen avenges her missing limbs by killing a cannibal woman (Yolanda Ross), and taking her young daughter (Jayda Fink). But the girl’s father, a shirtless cannibal with a tattoo identifying him as Miami Man (Jason Momoa) is hellbent on his own revenge.
Which is when the movie turns into a kind of dystopian love story.
This may all sound ludicrous, but Amirpour directs her charges with far more restraint than you’d expect from a post-apocalyptic cannibal movie. Sure, there’s gore here, Miami Man hungrily eating human ribs by a campfire, but somehow the movie (and Momoa) makes you feel sympathy even for this pro-wrestler-sized beast driven to eat human flesh. So in this desolate desert landscape, Arlen and Miami Man form a tentative and unlikely bond.
How would we fare after the breakdown of society? Would we follow a leader like The Dream and settle for mere comfort and escape? Or could we somehow make peace with the enemy, even someone whose friends ate us? These are questions we may never have to answer, but despite its bleak vision of the future, The Bad Batch gives you, along with a great soundtrack, something you may never have expected from a cannibal movie: hope.
Written and directed by Ana Lily Amirpour
With Suki Waterhouse, Jason Momoa, Keanu Reeves, Jim Carrey
Rated R for drug content, nudity, and people eating people
118 minutes
Opens today at Angelika Pop-up
