TRIBECA REVIEW: ‘Eddie: The Sleepwalking Cannibal’
The title of Boris Rodriguez’s new film, Eddie: The Sleepwalking Cannibal, pretty much sums up the experience of watching this dark comedy. Set in the rural stretches of Koda Lake, Canada, the movie is an odd look at an artist’s yearning for inspiration. It’s never funny or serious enough to demand our attention, and yet it achieves a semi-Coen-brothers atmosphere to its proceedings. The film, which recently played the Tribeca Film Festival, is a head-scratcher, to be sure.
Lars Olafssen (Thure Lindhardt) is a celebrated painter who hasn’t created a solitary piece of art in nearly a decade. His name still has weight around the industry, but his creative light is beginning to dim. To shake things up, he moves to Koda Lake to become a professor at a private art school. The institution, which is facing monetary losses and potential closure, hopes to inspire Lars to begin painting again and maybe put the school back on the map.
Up until this point, Eddie: The Sleepwalking Cannibal is a typical stranger in a strange land dramedy. There’s definitely some carnage on the horizon though. As soon as Eddie pulls into the small town of Koda Lake, he hits a deer and puts the animal out of its misery with some needless blunt trauma.
The title character enters the picture in a somewhat ridiculous fashion. One of the school’s largest donors has a son (Eddie, played by Dylan Smith) who doesn’t quite fit into the classroom or society as a whole. The teachers treat him like a man-child, allowing him to sit in on classes and color his simple paintings. For some strange reason, Lesley (Georgina Reilly), a teacher at the school, asks Lars to take Eddie into his home for a few days after the rich donor turns up dead. Reluctantly, the painter agrees and so begins the bloodshed. It turns out that this man, who doesn’t speak much, is a ravenous monster in the middle of the night. During sleepwalking bouts, he leaves his bedroom and finds some unsuspecting prey. At first, it’s a few animals. Next, it’s a few humans.
The weird thing is — unless you’re already weirded out — is that Eddie’s savage wanderings inspire Lars to being painting again. Soon, he wants his new roommate to kill, just so he can create another masterpiece.
Rodriguez, who also wrote the screenplay, is able to capture fairly effective performances from his cast of actors, especially Lindhardt. Still, the story becomes so pointlessly strange that it’s difficult to feel anything for this artist. Everything has a tongue-in-cheek humor, but that’s not enough to sustain the feature for the entire 83-minute duration.
It doesn’t say much about artistic creation, and it says even less about society and how we react to violence. I’m assuming much of this is meant to be allegorical, but nothing sticks. It would seem that the characters and plot occurrences are conveniently odd only to serve the overall story. Lars needs inspiration, and he must receive this from Eddie’s mayhem — so let’s put them together in the same house. Having the action take place in a remote, cold expanse adds to the horror vibe — so let’s put this art school in the middle of nowhere.
Eddie: The Sleepwalking Cannibal eats a lot of flesh and blood, but it’s still in need of a pulse.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
