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A lot of Josh Forbes’ horror comedy is about how much it can remind you of Frank Henenlotter. So much of “Destroy All Neighbors” is Henenlotter from a man going insane, to splatter and gore, to the boldly colored close up shots of the various characters. “Destroy All Monsters” is a movie that I respect for its willingness to be about as random as weird as possible while not having much of a narrative. It’s all paper thin in terms of characterization and basic plot, and mainly is a pitch for an audience that is in the market for just outright insanity, and nihilism. “Destroy All Neighbors” brings it in spades.
William Brown (Jonah Ray Rodrigues), a neurotic, self-absorbed musician determined to finish his prog-rock magnum opus, faces a creative roadblock in the form of a noisy and grotesque neighbor named Vlad. Finally working up the nerve to demand that Vlad keep it down, William inadvertently decapitates him. But, while attempting to cover up one murder, William’s accidental reign of terror causes victims to pile up and become undead corpses who torment and create more bloody detours on his road to completing his album.
So much of Forbes’ movie revolves around a small cast and a self contained setting where Jonah Ray’s character William is literally driven insane by such a minute annoyance. If anything while Jonah Ray is great, it’s Alex Winter who just goes all out here. Hidden beneath layers of make up and prosthetics, Winter makes is a master class of chewing up the scenery as the nemesis to William Brown. He’s this middle Eastern, bulked, often disgusting neighbor who isn’t aware he’s being nuisance. And even in the end we can never be sure if Vlad is about as grotesque as he looks on screen or if we’re seeing it all through William’s eyes. William is the epitome of the unreliable narrator and spends a lot of the movie trying to match wits with his own brain.
This amounts to a lot of his victims coming back to life in various dismembered body parts, and William digging himself deeper in his murder and crimes he’s committing. Truly the fun is watching how the special effects team pulls off the various effects as they do a good job concocting a re-animated corpse of a burnt woman, Vlad’s decapitated head, and so much more. That said, there’s just not enough meat in the narrative to make the experience worthwhile as there’s no focus on William’s work with his music, nor his relationship with his girlfriend, et al. There’s no indication on William’s mental state, either. Is he mentally ill when we meet him? Did Vlad set off a switch in his brain?
That’s paired with the fact that even at eighty five minutes in length, “Destroy All Neighbors” feels way too long and just loses steam in the final ten minutes. In the end, it’s a perfectly okay horror comedy. I’m not disappointed I watched it, but it’s not a movie I’d ever re-visit.