“Josie,” the incomprehensibly stupid new movie from director Eric England (“Contracted”), features a scene wherein Dylan McDermott asks a turtle how it’s doin’. Later, beloved character actor Kurt Fuller calls a turtle a “goddamned idiot” and further exclaims, “you stupid fucking turtle!” Sophie Turner’s titular character, on the other hand, thinks turtles are “so cute.” “Josie” is at its best when its characters are voicing their opinions on turtles. It’s unfortunate that they spend so much of the film talking about things that are, sadly, not turtles.
McDermott plays Hank, a mysterious, southern loner who lives an antisocial life in a shitty motel. He’s the guard of a local high school, which apparently entails sitting in his pickup all day listening to country music (perhaps due to McDermott’s ineptitude with the accent, this movie goes to great lengths to convince its audience that Hank is, in fact, from the South). He occasionally clashes with the annoying Marcus (Jack Kilmer), a vagabond high school kid who delights in provoking the strange guard.
One day, Josie (Turner) shows up in town. She moves in across from Hank in the, previously mentioned, shitty motel, attends Marcus’ high school, and proceeds to develop extensive flirtations with both male characters. Josie lives on her own; recently emancipated from her parents for one reason or another. She brings Hank out of his shell, encourages him to be more social, and, in an especially baffling scene, accompanies him to a marina where Hank proceeds to tell Josie his life story. However, the film, for reasons unknown, never explains why Hank was going to the marina in the first place.
Once Hank’s life story is told, the remainder of the film’s plot becomes clear. It sets up a third-act twist so astonishingly obvious as to be completely and totally unforgivable.
Meanwhile, two of Hank’s fellow hotel-dwellers (Robin Bartlett and Kurt Fuller) notice the ongoing flirtation between grown-ass Hank and teenage Josie. In the film’s smartest thread, they do their best to persuade Hank to stay away from the girl. The film’s best scene comes late, when Bartlett’s character, Martha, confronts Hank about Josie. Martha tells him that she believes it when he says he and Josie are “just friends,” but that she sees the way they look at each other and that Hank wouldn’t be “crazy to think there’s a chance.” She’s not wrong about the way Hank looks at Josie; a decent alternate title for “Josie” could be “Dylan McDermott lusts over Sansa Stark in fishnet stockings for 90 minutes.”
If you haven’t figured it out by now, McDermott is bad here, but it’s difficult to say if it’s his fault or the ridiculous script’s. His fake southern accent sucks, without debate, but the film forces him to ask a turtle how he’s doin’. So, who’s really to blame? Likely, even if the script was much sharper than it is, McDermott would be miscast in the role. He doesn’t have the necessary gravitas to pull off this particular flavor of tortured soul.
Turner is better in the lead role. It’s something of a coming-out for her, her first high(ish)-profile non-“Game of Thrones” role (if you don’t count a cameo or two in that “X-Men” movie we’ve all forgotten about), and she does well as Josie. She gets that hard-edged vulnerability just right, but her good work is eventually undermined by the interminable dumbness of the film’s climax.
Jack Kilmer is pitch-perfect as Josie’s flirt Marcus (as is Daeg Faerch as his buddy Gator). While Turner is decent in the larger-than-life titular role, Kilmer’s Marcus is the only character in the film who is grounded in any sense of reality. There’s an actual moral complexity to his performance absent in every other aspect of “Josie.” Regrettably, he too is tied up in the film’s infuriating ending, rendering much of his previous work for naught.
The film is oddly shot, alternating between kinetic camera movements and a more laid-back, static visual style. It has a cheap veneer throughout, such as in scenes of Josie tanning by the motel pool that look more like a music video than a feature film. And England’s camera is just as lustful after Sophie Turner as Hank is for Josie; slow tracking shots up and down the actress’s body abound in “Josie.” A hilarious poolside shot has McDermott sharing the frame with a very specific part of Turner’s bikinied body.
There’s a lot wrong with “Josie,” but the thing that sinks it beyond the possibility of recommendation in any circumstance is its aforementioned third-act twist and ending. In the interest of avoiding spoilers, just simply imagine the dumbest possible ending to the described film, and you wouldn’t be far off. It’s awful at every level. Characters do things that make no logical or ethical sense. They get away with things normal people couldn’t possibly get away with, and none of it is at all surprising, given the fact that the film’s conclusion is transparently telegraphed from that inexplicable marina scene. Kudos to Turner and McDermott for going the eccentric indie route—an honorable path to be sure—but man, “Josie” is a dud. [D]