PLOT: Four young girls resort to murder to make sure their mother’s new boyfriend isn’t going to hurt her in any way.
REVIEW: I don’t know the story behind the making of director Bennet De Brabandere’s feature debut Ankle Biters which was formerly known as Cherrypicker, but I’d like to think the film was inspired by Robert Rodriguez’s advice that beginning filmmakers write something based on the people and things they know they have access to. For El Mariachi, Rodriguez knew he had access to “a bus, a guitar case, and a turtle”, and he built the movie around that. If De Brabandere wrote his movie specifically because he knew he could get the four Reid sisters to star in it, that was a genius move. If they just happened to come in to audition for the movie, it was very fortuitous.
The sisters are Rosalee, Lily, Violet, and Dahlia Reid, and in Ankle Biters they play Rosalee, Lily, Violet, and Dahlia Haywood (the shared names are what made me think the roles were written with them in mind), the daughters of young widow Laura (Marianthi Evans). Laura is dating former hockey player Sean Chase (Zion Forrest Lee, who also crafted the story with De Brabandere), and the girls are highly suspicious of this new dude in their mom’s life. They’re certain Sean is planning to hurt Laura in some way, and even think he has scared her into staying with him. This couldn’t be further from the truth – Laura is very happy with Sean, and he’s never shown to be anything other than a good guy with her and around the kids. The kids really only mistrust him because they don’t like the idea of their mom being with someone new… but they feel their suspicions are confirmed when they find a cell phone video of Laura and Sean having sex. This couple has a kink for the rough stuff, and all the girls see when they watch the video is violence. So they set out to save their mom from Sean, no matter what it takes.
The story of this movie is rather straightforward. The girls don’t trust Sean from the start and we just watch them take things further and further as they try to get the guy out of their lives. Some very twisted stuff happens by the end of this movie (including variations of a couple popular urban legends), but the kids rarely come off as full-on little devils. There is an innocence to the horrible things they do, as they’re not old enough to fully understand the consequences and seriousness of their actions. There are elements in the film that De Brabandere could have explored to make it a bit deeper. We are shown that Sean has had a violent temper in the past, and he keeps having flashbacks to a hockey game where he gouged an opponent’s eye out, but in the present there’s no sign of that old violence. De Brabandere could have made the viewer uncertain about Sean as well, but instead we’re meant to be on his side the whole time. And even though we know he’s capable of removing someone’s eyeball in the middle of a game, the film is effective at making us feel sympathy for Sean.
Lee and Evans both do well in their roles, and there are notable supporting characters played by Matia Jackett (another cast member who shares a name with her character), Evert Houston, Jani Lauzon, Michael Copeman, and Colin Mochrie – yep, the Whose Line Is It Anyway? guy shows up in this movie as a detective who tries to figure out what’s going on in the Chase/Haywood household. He plays the role in a down-to-earth way and still gets some laughs. But the MVPs here are the Reid sisters, who are simultaneously adorable and disturbing, and handle the crazy things their characters do perfectly. The standout among these standouts is Rosalee, the most twisted one of the bunch. She did a great job playing a little maniac.
Ankle Biters is a weird, amusing, unsettling movie that had the potential to be something more than it is, but as it is it’s quirky and entertaining enough to be worth checking out.
Truly my biggest issue with Ankle Biters is the fact that it starts off with a Gary Glitter song playing on the soundtrack, a stunningly awkward choice for a movie that stars a bunch of little kids. Surely the filmmakers must have been aware of the uproar that occurred when “Rock and Roll Part 2” was used in Joker, so why would they use it here? Of all possible musical choices, they went with this cringe-inducing one. I’d cut out the Gary Glitter, but the score composed by Maurizio Guarini is pretty cool.
Dark Star Pictures is giving Ankle Biters a DVD and on demand release on November 16th.