Directed and written by Samuel Gonzalez Jr. (The Retaliators), The Plastic Men is a movie that is about coming to terms with your past, using horror as a device to explore that. Starting off light-hearted, I wasn't even sure I had been been provided with the correct screener, but things soon escalated into a post-Vietnam hellscape, the horror very much psychological.
Based on a true story (details of which are provided via some screens of text at film's end), this tells the story of Vietnam veteran Jonathan Teller (James Preston) as he struggles to adjust to normal life after his traumatic experiences during his time in the war. Haunted by severe hallucinations and flashbacks, the man is ready to end his life, but a chance encounter with a stranger changes his fate.
This takes a sympathetic view of veterans, with the director himself being one this was obviously going to be the case. I had expected a film in the vein of all time classic Vietnam veteran horror, Jacob's Ladder, something which it would be hard to beat. Without deep spoilers, that could be said to have a certain paranormal influence to what is actually going on, while with The Plastic Men it is shown to all be in the protagonists damaged mind. The story moves around in time, covering key points of Jonathan's life, though interestingly, the whole Vietnam section isn't shown, except as disjointed hellish flashbacks. It isn't clear what troubles the man so much, but the frequent hallucination of a little Vietnamese girl suggests darkness. I liked how this backstory was teased over the course of the film, little moments, such as Jonathan dropping a soup can in a store he was working at have a greater relevance later on. The hallucinations are where the horror is at, with various items frequently leaking blood, and certain scenes devolve into madness due to the perspective of the unreliable protagonist. One example is him shooting up a bus load of people, only for it to be revealed this only took place in his head.
The jumps in time are smoothed over by the narrator (William Fichtner - Independence Day: Resurgence, Elysium); an older version of Jonathan whose narration feeds into the true life aspect of the tale (the film being based on an unanswered mysterious Craigslist ad in which an unnamed veteran thanked a woman for saving his life many decades previously). Of the side characters, many were not really given any details to flesh them out, my favourite of these was Abbott (Aaron Dalla Villa - Immortal), a crazed antagonistic veteran who later comes to represent the more demented side of Jonathan's internal thoughts. He appeared in all my favourite scenes, his manic energy brought to life excellently by the actor.
The Plastic Men wasn't the film I thought it was going to be, the psychological horror all taking place in the main character's mind rather than an actual physical horror. It was a deep dive into living with your past, and how to move on from traumatic events, making for a story with a purpose, though one that even at eighty minutes felt quite slow paced. The constant shifting of time periods helped keep things feeling fresh, and while not entirely my type of film, I thought the story being told was decent enough. The Plastic Men releases on Amazon on March 11th.
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