Choke has Shane Ryan as a serial killer who strangles his victims with his bare hands. When he meets Jeanie (Sarah Brine), a 17-year-old, on a train, he's instantly smitten, and she's drawn to him too. At the same time, a police detective investigating one of his murders (Scott Butler), and who also has a thing for erotic asphyxia, meets Jeanie and he falls for her too. Will the love they have for her keep them from going over the deep end, or is their going over the deep end just what she wants.
Seriously, I don't even know if I got that synopsis right. I don't even know if it matters. I don't even know if it's a bad thing that it matters. Seriously. Scenes flow from one into the other as if the film was tossed in a blender and glued back together. Is Ryan strangling someone, or dreaming of strangling them, or is he strangling them now, or is he strangling them in the past? Does any of it matter? To some extent I think it does, because while I like the chances this film took in terms of the narrative, cinematography, and performances, when you boil this down and get past everything else, this is still your classic older guy has thing for a teenage girl trope, and like every other time we see that trope, they try to repackage it, but no matter how you package it, the trope is the trope, and I think that's important to consider here despite everything else I liked about it.
Shane Ryan is the star, and also executive producer, and he turns in the kind of manic performance that I think at least elevates his serial killer character beyond the usual serial killer in a movie. In some respects, he's playing his serial killer like the Joker, and a Joker that bigger name actors who try to play that part think they're giving us, but missing altogether, while Ryan is here nailing it. And I think to some extent too, his performance lifts the older guy/teenage girl trope out of the usual baseness to make it something more than that, but I think that thing is too James Woods-y or Woody Allen-y in our society for even the most manic and intense performance to get it beyond that. That shouldn't take away from how much I liked his performance in this though.
The teen girl was played by Sarah Brine, and I think like Ryan, she tries to elevate things beyond the old guy/teen girl trope. She plays her character with a mix of agency and nihilism that, if it weren't so tied to this tired old guy/teen girl construct, would have really worked. That's the toughest part for me about this, Ryan and Brine turn in great performances, I wouldn't want to not have either in the film, but when you put them together, there's still that sense of "oh we're doing this again?" I don't know how you fix that either. I mean I think even if they didn't have any scenes together, the trope is so common and so tired that that wouldn't be enough. It's a Catch-22.
This was directed by Gregory Hatanaka, who also did Samurai Cop 2, and I think had they played Samurai Cop 2 straight the way they played this straight, it would have worked much better. I mean overall this movie allowed me to appreciate it better as a movie than Samurai Cop 2 did, and maybe that's because Hatanaka was trying to live up to something in the former, while here he was able to make his own thing. Also he and Ryan have worked on a lot of stuff together, and they seem to get what each wants out of a scene. Looking at it like that, imagining a 72-minute Batman movie with Ryan as the Joker and Hatanaka directing sounds too amazing for words. It's a shame the studio system is so litigious, because these characters like Batman are really part of the zeitgeist, and if something like this were to come to fruition, I feel like a Ryan/Hatanaka Batman movie would only enhance the franchise and get people to invest in the big screen ones that much more. I'm trying to think who my Batman would be confronting Ryan's Joker. Maybe you don't even need Batman with their movie.
As I mentioned above, this was a Cinema Epoch film, which is actually Gregory Hatanaka's releasing company. When I looked them up on IMDb, they had a ton of titles with "(Video)" after the names, which is right up our alley. I remember when I did Nipples and Palm Trees for them, someone on that production had talked about me maybe covering the Boston screening of Samurai Cop, but because it was a midnight showing, I needed to take the train, and couldn't afford a hotel since the trains didn't run that late. It's too bad, because I think that would have been a really fun experience!
And with that, let's wrap this up. Choke is available on Prime and Tubi. I wish I knew what to tell you on whether or not you should check it out. It's totally unique in terms of style and pacing, but it also runs the tired theme of old guy/teen girl, and for me that takes the uniqueness and makes it baser than I'd want; but this is also worth checking out as an indie film that does take chances, and I think that can't be understated. Thank you again to Mad Sin Cinema for sending along this screener, I appreciate it!
For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11127256
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