Sane

By Pat Hines • Sep 3rd, 2004 • Category: Horror

Sane, a choppy, colorful and violent little creation written and directed by “The Cousin Bros.” (real life brothers Shane Ryan and Jeremy Williams, who also star) is no more than three murder scenes, each chilling in their own right, with one additional scene featuring a “Jackass” style nude prank, a hyperactive and context-less montage of one of the killers getting drunk and an epilogue of sorts consisting of one of the main characters rambling into the camera, trying to be funny and disturbing with lines like “I wanna kill a whole bunch of people,” and “I wanna kill the camera too!”

The experimental short claims in a title card (after multiple justified disclaimers regarding violent content) that the following is the “evidence” that helped to convict the two main characters, Keith and Miles, of three counts of murder. The first murder is the most disturbing because it is the most realistically presented. Our two heroes find some poor sap drowning his sorrows alone in a playground late at night and proceed to strangle him to death. The scene is effective in creating the illusion of a snuff video, as it was shot with the night vision feature common on most store-bought digital cameras today. Unlike most of these cameras, however, this one adds splashes of color to the affair, as opposed to the normal grayish green look the night vision produces. Even though this is meant to be “evidence”, it makes sense that the footage would be edited and stylized with effects, since the young killers appear to be amateur filmmakers.

The second murder is easily the most bizarre. Miles pulls a Norman Bates, dressing up as a woman to do the deed, though his weapon of choice is a frying pan rather than a knife. This killing occurs off screen and is mercifully much quicker than the first. Lastly, after filming their third victim from nearly every angle as she showers (apparently without her realizing it despite the close proximity of camera to bare flesh) Keith and Miles rape and kill her.

There is no story to speak of, very little coherent dialogue and almost zero context to place the murders in. The epilogue seems to take place right before the first murder and a motive slightly emerges, but the two other murders are presented as completely random. Two of the non-murder scenes help paint a better picture of the killers themselves. The first is a rather tranquil handheld shot taken at dusk of the barren Arizona landscape where the murders take place. The opening title cards reveal that the killers’ alleged sole reason for killing was “boredom” and this unbroken shot conveys the type of atmosphere that could give birth to such treacherous idleness. A later scene documents a prank of sorts featuring Keith, a few years younger, ambling naked through what looks to be a mall. This gives the idea that these two found other way of distracting themselves before arriving at murder.

The short is your average exercise in shaky camera work and rapid editing, with no lighting other than natural sources, but this in turn creates a somewhat appropriate grain and grittiness. The audio work is interesting during the murder scenes and the ear-throbbing rock music that accompanies is adequate.

Youth violence remains a subject ripe for exploration, but Sane as presented does not succeed in showing why its main characters do what they do. Lots of teenagers are bored, but how many end up killing others because of it? The movie seems to want to break from its self-imposed “evidence” structure and explain what it was that set these two off. I can’t help but think that if the filmmakers had bothered to veer off the beaten path of “experimental” and into the realm of narrative, they might have found what they were looking for.

Two stars.

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