Otis – DVD Review

Ah prom night. That magical evening that every high school girl dreams about. She toils for months trying on and picking out the perfect dress. She works out and diets so that she can be as thin as she possibly can be. She practices doing her hair and make-up so that on that magical night, everything will be flawless. And then her date comes to pick her up, hopefully looking as handsome as she has imagined. But the likelier story is that he picked out whatever tux was available for rent that night, swung by the local grocery store to pick out whatever corsage they had left, and has less than pure thoughts in mind for his date. Not Otis though. No, not Otis. He has everything planned just perfectly. And if fate is on his side, he might get lucky too.

Otis is meant to be a satire of the recent trend of “torture-porn” films that has overtaken the horror genre. The trouble is that it has a fine line to walk upon. It can’t be a spoof, Scary Movie 4 has already done that with their parody of Saw, the most popular of torture porns. It can’t take itself too seriously as a torture porn either and this is where the film loses itself a little.

Otis (newcomer Bostin Christopher) is a forty-year-old, oafish, pizza delivery boy/man-child who is obsessed with re-creating his prom night as he thinks it should have happened. He meets a suburbanite hottie teenager named Riley Lawson (Ashley Johnson) as he is delivering pizza to her house and immediately is convinced, by an act of God, that she should become his latest victim. (Or rather, his latest “Kim”, as he calls all of his victims. Kim was the name of the girl that he wanted to take to the prom when he was in high school.) He kidnaps her in broad daylight and takes her to his house to preen her for the “big night.” While Riley/”Kim” is locked up, she quickly realizes that she can survive longer if she plays along with Otis and does what he asks of her.

Meanwhile, the Lawson family is desperate to find their little girl and bring her back home. Mom (Ileana Douglas) and Dad (Daniel Stern) called the police and are working closely with Agent Hotchkiss (Jere Burns) to find her. While all of this is going on, Riley/”Kim” is breaking out of Otis’s house. She calls her mother and tells her everything: his name, where he lives, where she can be picked up. And this is where the story gets good and the big twist takes place. None of this will be described in this review.

The problem with the film is in the middle parts. All of the scenes of Riley and Otis playing out various pre-prom moments are a little too graphic and realistic. It seemed like everyone lost focus of the film for awhile and went off on a tangent. The scenes with Riley and Otis are interspersed with scenes of the family and the police. I felt like the family did a better job of satirizing the current state of America and family life in general than the horror scenes did of satirizing torture porn, especially in this part of the film. For example, the family has the news on all the time watching for updates on the Kim serial killer. The whole time they’re watching the news, there’s a ticker going by mocking the war in Iraq and the US’s need to police the world. It’s so funny, I forgot to pay attention to what the reporter was talking about. The reporter (Tracy Scoggins) was perfect in mocking the news reporters that are on today. She just didn’t care about anything she was reporting on. The horror satire comes into play with the story’s twist. It does it very well here, but is a little tired after the poor job it tries to do earlier in the story.

The film is perfectly cast. Ileana Douglas and Daniel Stern have great chemistry as husband and wife. They looked like they were having a ball with this film and they were fun to watch as well. Newcomer Jared Kusnitz was very funny as the younger brother Reed. He’s got a Paul Dano thing going that I think could really work for his career. I haven’t seen Ashley Johnson in anything since 2000’s What Women Want and I still know her as little Chrissy from Growing Pains, but she’s excellent in this. Bostin Christopher, Otis, must be in seventh heaven right now. He’s landed the role of a lifetime. He holds his own against the experienced cast, but he’s obviously got a lot of room to grow as an actor. Kevin Pollack plays Otis’s older brother Elmo. He’s not really given too much to do here, but he’s always fun to see. He has a lot to do with the twist that I won’t reveal. I’ve saved Jere Burns for last. He steals the show as Agent Hotchkiss. He’s simply hilarious.

With the perfect cast and the spot on satire of today’s society, Otis succeeds brilliantly. However, the filmmakers have set out to create a horror satire. In that, I think that it fails more than it succeeds. There are too many moments that seem as forced as Otis forcing his victims to go to the prom with him. The ending however, was great and left it wide open for a sequel. Even with my reservations, I’d like to see more of Otis.

Otis is given the Dolby Digital audio treatment here. The transfer is very clean and very professional. The film is presented with a 1.77:1 aspect ratio. The visual quality of films like this is always difficult to rate. They’re supposed to be dirty and grainy and bloody, especially the torture scenese. If that’s the look they were going for, they’ve succeeded.

The Twisted World of Otis – A making of that features interviews with the cast and crew. Most of the focus is given to the writing of the screenplay and casting.

The Birthday Party Alternate Ending – BRILLIANT! Anyone who’s seen this film and who has NOT seen this ending, I would recommend you do. You can view this with or without the director’s “commentary”. It’s really more of an introduction than a commentary. At 5:57 minutes, it’s a little too long, but this ending is far superior.

Otis’ Home Movie Suite 16 – This is a conversation that Otis has with all of his Kims. It’s pretty funny and at only 2:53, it’s worth a watch.

Commentary by director/producer Tony Krantz and writer Erik Jendersen where they give a lot of good information as to why they did certain things. It made the movie cooler knowing the reasons why.

The theatrical trailer is also included, but it’s thrown in with the other trailers in a feature called Raw Feed Trailers. Other Raw Feed trailers are: Rest Stop, Rest Stop 2, Sublime, and Believers.

The trailers that are shown before the feature film when you put the DVD in your player are: Lost Boys: The Tribe, iseeyou.com, Appleseed ExMachina, and The Orphanage

That’s a LOT of trailers.

Even though there were a lot of things I didn’t like, and even though there were times where I was a little bored, I still liked Otis. What I really like is that the extras were fun and informative and made me like the movie more. I hate when the extras make me want to immediately eject the disc and throw it across the room. Horror fans are going to love this movie. Otis comes recommended.

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Warner Home Video and Raw Feed presents Otis. Directed by Tony Krantz. Starring Ashley Johnson, Daniel Stern, Ileana Douglas, Kevin Pollack, Jere Burns. Written by Erik Jendersen. Running time: 100 minutes. Rated R. Released on DVD: June 10, 2008. Available at Amazon.com.