If there’s one thing director Josh Forbes’ Destroy All Neighbors has in spades, it’s chaotic energy. Expect a tornado of plasticine special effects, jumpy storytelling randomness, and electric guitar noodling with reckless abandon. Take that as both a warning and invitation, because depending on your personal horror preferences, it works equally well as either.
Shudder’s first original of the new year is a splatterhouse oddball that anchors its legacy on practical effects by respected artist Gabe Bartalos (whose credits include Basket Case 2, Basket Case 3: The Progeny, and Brain Damage). It isn’t shy about giving less attention to its thinly scripted storylines than it does to squirts of red juiciness. Destroy All Neighbors feels better suited for the streaming service’s revamped Creepshow series – trimming the runtime to a leaner sprint might’ve benefited the SFX-forward romp. It’s blindingly evident how little cinematic vocabulary there is in play here beyond sloppy gore gags, to the point where anything from tonality and performances sometimes feel like afterthoughts wedged between all the emphasis put on rubbery monster designs.
Destroy All Neighbors Gallery
In that context, Jonah Ray Rodrigues stars as William Brown, a struggling Los Angeles prog-rocker living in a dingy apartment complex while chasing his dreams. All of Rodrigues’ anxious energy is channeled into a dorky stereotype who must deal with every tenant’s worst nightmare: a noisy neighbor. Enter Alex Winter (of Bill & Ted fame) as Vlad, the wrinkly, tattooed party animal who spends day and night blasting EDM tracks so loudly that William’s walls rattle. Winter’s accent waffles between Russian and hints of Irish, muffled under heavy prosthetic makeup that makes him look like a tracksuit mafia goon crossed with Warwick Davis’ Leprechaun. Despite that ridiculousness, Vlad works well as an imposing psychopath and William’s worst nightmare, which sets up the streamlined conflict of Destroy All Neighbors: Can William (“Willie” as Vlad calls him) stand up to his next-door nemesis and ask the brute to quiet down?
The answer is yes, and that’s when the fun at least attempts to begin. Rodrigues’ wimpy loser clashes against Winter’s cartoonishly brash machismo as William confronts Vlad in his apartment. It’s a ridiculous sequence of events involving a greasy chicken bone and concrete barbell weights that is meant to display the extremes of both men’s personalities, coming off a bit “Troma Lite,” given the lean into situational nonsense. Rodrigues does his best to embody the reluctance of a gangly band-geek turned killer, which works fine enough initially, and Destroy All Neighbors gains momentum once it gets to actually destroying neighbors. There are some fun nods to Dexter in both the gruesomeness with which William covers his tracks and his deceased victims’ tendency to stick around and continue their conversations in his head.
The bloodthirsty idea comes with entertaining merits; for example, whoever William kills in the name of progressive rock ‘n’ roll perfection isn’t truly dead. They’re shown in their slain forms as spirits, helping William’s sanity spiral out of control with haste. Bartalos’ craftsmanship in reanimating their corpses includes excellent details like roadkill tire marks, undead pin cushions, and a fully puppeteered woman who’s been zapped to a charred skeleton. It doesn’t look remarkably realistic — more like something Rodrigues would comment over from the theater seats in the Mystery Science Theater 3000 reboot – but that’s the hopeful charm of Destroy All Neighbors. Allusions to the talkative half-zombie in Return of the Living Dead or no-budget Astron-6 productions like Manborg are a blessing to the audience, proficient in the art of morbidly zany bloodshed.
The problem, and the ultimate pitfall that entraps Destroy All Neighbors, is that William’s descent into madness is messy in the wrong ways. Storytelling advancement is wishy-washy at best, while relationship drama between the self-obsessed William and his endlessly patient partner Emily (Kiran Deol) splats emotionlessly flat. Vlad’s undead form as a pile of flesh chunks is explained as a vision in William’s head, but there’s little attention paid to how their interactions play out in the eyes of others or as more ghouls join the fray. Rodrigues’ performance as an annoyingly obsessive artist who gets high off his own fumes is often a bit too much, lost amid the cast of half-baked caricatures. Destroy All Neighbors wants to be one of those after-dark treats championed for its zaniness, but it’s trying too hard to achieve that status. Instead, it’s a collection of “WTF” choices that are haplessly taped together, ready to collapse under their own weight at the faintest breeze.
While the entire thing doesn’t disastrously fall to pieces, Destroy All Neighbors is never as riotously entertaining or dreadfully thrilling as it seems like it’s on the cusp of becoming. Appearances by the likes of Thomas Lennon (a pushover label owner), Kumail Nanjiani (a bit part as a security guard), and Jon Daly (a trippy prog-rock mentor for William) aren’t scripted with enough substance to allow them to steal their scenes. The comedy can be worth a chuckle as William starts befriending his mangled entourage, but Forbes isn’t proficient enough at balancing comedy with horror in what should be a harmonious equation. Then there’s the whimpering third act, like a boardwalk dive bar’s version of what should be an epic, music-forward finale that shreds more than radical licks.