Memorial Day

Tasha Chemplavil

Monday, June 16, 2008 | 9:56 p.m.

Writer and director Josh Fox cast award-winning performance ensemble the International WOW Company in his deeply disturbing and entirely provocative Memorial Day.

The film starts with a montage of public signs heralding veterans for their part in securing our nation’s freedom. The nauseatingly shaky handheld camera then proceeds to document a group of 20-somethings as they engage in drunken debauchery on a particularly eventful Memorial Day. With their indecent exposure and profanity-peppered parlance, the group of mostly anonymous inebriates appear to be everything that is wrong with America’s youth. Their degeneracy is largely laughable and mostly harmless. They’re the type of drunk people who are only entertaining to other drunk people.

But when their drunken antics give rise to rape and a homophobic attack, the holiday fun is over. The members of the group go on to perform one vile act after another, never even stopping to try and garner sympathy from their audience. They are unabashed in their depravity, and just when you think you can’t possibly endure any more outrageous surprises, Fox smashes another one in your face.

About halfway through the film, it becomes apparent that these plastered youths are members of the military, and their on-leave wantonness pales in comparison to the evils that occur in their on-duty lives.

While the experience of watching Memorial Day is not one I’d ever want to repeat, I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen. No matter how shocking and reprehensible the onscreen images were, I felt compelled to know what and how many unspeakable acts these people would commit. This can be credited as much to the horrifying nature of the script as to the superb abilities of the actors.

Coming in with no real prior knowledge of the film, Memorial Day honestly looked and felt to me like a documentary. The camerawork coupled with the wholly persuasive performances had me convinced that these monstrous people perpetrating these deplorable crimes were real-life American soldiers.

The film is unsettling, alarming and completely engrossing. And although I’m going to try my best, Memorial Day is one film I won’t soon forget.