by John Noonan
Worth: $15.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Adara Starr, Mike Amason, Joshua R Outzen
Intro:
If you’re looking for sociological discourse mixed in with mutant babies, then this will be right up your alley.
Someone once said, hippies are mean people pretending to be nice, while punks are friendly people pretending to be mean. Pater Noster and the Mission of Light, from director Christopher Bickel (Bad Girls), doesn’t seem in any way interested in dispelling that myth anytime soon. Hell, he might not even care about future generations either.
The film introduces us to Max, played by newcomer Adara Starr, a twentysomething working in an independent record store. Far removed from the high street shops with their pen-clicking, lanyard-spinning shop assistants filled with promises of ‘I could check with our Preston store and see if they have a copy’, Max and her colleagues don’t suffer time wasters kindly. Indeed, we’re introduced to our heroes with more than a passing nod to Clerks as they have their knowledge of music and their own jobs mansplained to them.
Max doesn’t just love records; she thinks of ‘releasing’ records from their ‘bougie’ owners whenever she finds a rare collectible. So, she is more than ecstatic when one of her regulars drops off the titular album for a trade, seemingly unaware of its rarity. After doing an EB Games on him ($50 store credit for its actual value of $1000), Max goes to look for more copies and catches the attention of Pater Noster himself (Mike Amason).
Having shunned the limelight several decades earlier, Pater and his merry band have been living a quiet life in a commune far off in the woods. And it’s to here, Max and her friends are invited to visit and perhaps pick up rare vinyl along the way. What could go wrong? Well, people living with emetophobia might want to brace themselves for the next 80 minutes.
Bad Girls was an amphetamine laced tribute to the exploitation movies of the ‘60s, where women were powerful and men were their prey. This time, Bickle has applied the brakes somewhat, allowing the film to breathe and the characters to be fully fleshed out, while still providing the blood that people want. Yes, someone gets their genitalia mutilated, but they feel more human than carrion.
Bickle’s film is evidently filmed on the breath of a budget, but everything from the camerawork to the film’s soundtrack feel anything but cheap. This has the down-and-dirty rawness of Jess Franco’s Killer Barbys while still trying to elevate the material into something less jokey. Think Antrum: The Deadliest Film Ever rather than something like The Editor.
Sure, it’s rough around the edges, and the acting is a mixed bag. However, underneath the gore-soaked hood, there’s plenty of bile to get your teeth into. “Victimhood is the social currency of these kids today,” derides one of Pator’s followers about their new guests, “if they want to play it, let them be it.” As hinted above, this is not just a horror movie; it’s a war of the generations, with the boomers feeding off the zoomers, both figuratively and literally. Not that Bickle has his sights squarely on those who came before him.
Max, as a character, is layered, with her reasoning behind her decisions coming across as ultimately selfish and, at one point, costing lives. There’s seemingly a parallel between her and Pater Noster, both believing that they’re protectors in some fashion, whether it be the nature of his cult or her somewhat pretentious attitude to records.
When her friend Jay Sin (Joshua R Outzen) screams “Fuck your whole generation” in the third act, it’s clear that Bickle is not singling out Boomers or Zoomers. It’s every generation in between and beyond, along with their unalienable belief that they are the pinnacle of culture! If you’re looking for sociological discourse mixed in with mutant babies, then this will be right up your alley.
