When I was ten years old, on a cold bank holiday, my father offered to buy a fizzy pop and take me to the cinema. I wanted to see THE DEER HUNTER. He bought tickets to GREASE. The film was, in my ten-year-old opinion, quite flawed, prioritizing spectacle over substance. While the audience giggled at any notion of romance, my father, thinking I was distracted, snuck out to copulate with my mother’s best friend in the backseat of his Ford Cortina. All of which is to say, I hate the cinema.
From then on, I avoided film altogether. While my secondary school friends found comfort in late night showings of THE BREAKFAST CLUB and SAY ANYTHING, I attended Chekov and Molière. Beyond the academic rigor theater presented, I found great solace in being an audience to live performers, because more important to me than the promise of happy Hollywood endings, was that theater demanded accountability from its viewers. Among other things, accountability prevents men from abandoning their daughters during “Summer Nights.”
This is why I was surprised when I was asked to review ONLY MURDERS IN THE BUILDING: THE MOVIE, the new blockbuster chronicling the adventures of three New Yorkers solving murders (and detailing their findings in a podcast) in their upper-west side apartment building. If you had asked me a year ago, I would have told you that I would rather be abducted, chained to a radiator, and have each of my finger and toenails removed by pliers than watch.
See a year ago, I didn’t really know Oliver Putnam–a man I now regard as both an artist who I almost respect and as an acquaintance (albeit someone whose birthday party I’d hope to never be invited to, lest I must think of something nice to write in a card). What is Putnam’s role in all of this? Well, alongside TV Cop Charles-Hayden Savage and artist/producer Mabel Mora, Putnam is one of the three podcasters whose story was adapted for the big screen.
Even knowing Putnam, I wasn’t exactly looking forward to watching. ONLY MURDERS IN THE BUILDING: THE MOVIE seemed to epitomize all that is wrong in the arts right now, an industry hijacked by big-tech and corporate interests that make decisions by way of algorithms, a movie that represents a kind of “IP” ouroboros, self-cannibalizing media about media about media. In fact, my editor had to threaten me with a demotion to The Community Theater Desk if I didn’t review it.
In case you aren’t familiar with the ads on the subway or printed on the bags of Subway sandwiches, and in case you haven’t seen the trailers which seem to run before every YouTube video instructing you how to make homemade slime and in between every ad for compression socks and blood pressure medication, the movie stars Zach Galifianakis, Eugene Levy, and Eva Longoria as the trio working to solve the murder of Mora’s childhood friend Tim Kono. Directed by the Brothers Sisters, it is… a warm mug of tea, a freshly knit jumper for my cold, frostbitten heart.
Again, I must reiterate that I am not someone who has ever found comfort in film. A film about murder, made by directors known for their experimental style and love of body horror was the last thing I ever expected to leave me feeling comforted, something an army of prescribers have been trying unsuccessfully to do for decades. And yet what ONLY MURDERS IN THE BUILDING: THE MOVIE manages to do so well, is to be a film about death–while being full of life, a truly inspiring mediation of the endless possibility of human connection. In similar fashion, it’s unafraid to exist as an obvious excuse for merchandising and commercial tie-ins while also complexly and intelligently exploring the burdens and responsibilities of deeply personal artistic creation.
More than comforted, ONLY MURDERS IN THE BUILDING: THE MOVIE (a god-awful name that brought bile into the back of my throat as I bought my tickets at the counter) left me feeling challenged. I have been a New Yorker for almost two decades and in that time, I will admit that I haven’t learned the name of a single neighbor. I’ve never asked to borrow a cup of sugar. I’ve never made a friend in my building who might check on me in case they found a strange odor emanating from my apartment. Which is concerning because if there’s one thing to take away from OMITBTM, the great inevitability is that someday, all of us will be but strange odors emanating from somewhere.
The movie is not without its faults. The music lives somewhere between Charli XCX and Charlie Brown—two hours of a child’s toy radio being dropped into a bathtub full of warm milk. The production design is garish and theatrical (Putnam’s apartment in particular), as if John Barrymore and John Waters were exploded, and their entrails were made into wallpaper. And yet, and I say this knowing that I just might regret it: this is a movie I might even rewatch. In my home. On my couch. Wrapped in a blanket with a large basket of popcorn. This time, I’ll skip the fizzy pop.
Written by Maxine Spear
