A bullied teenager gains the means to fight back when a botched faith healing bestows supernatural, shamanistic powers upon him. When his lifelong tormentors pull a prank that causes the death of someone he loves, the teen uses his newfound abilities for revenge and goes on a bloody rampage to settle the score.
Horror movies about bullied kids/young adults getting revenge for wrongs done to themselves or to a loved one are a staple food in the horror genre (Carrie, Prom Night, Toxic Avenger, The Pit, Tormented…you get the idea) and a highly satisfying one. Unfortunately The Unhealer falls short of honoring that horror niche and instead, feels like a first draft of a movie that, had it been better written/plotted out/directed, could have had made a name for itself in the teen revenge horror pantheon. After-all, how many of these types of teen horror films have a main character suffering from an Obsessive-Compulsive spectrum disorder like Pica (an eating disorder where a person is compelled to eat non-food objects)?
The symbolism alone would have made The Unhealer incredibly interesting.
Unfortunately for the main character of Kelly (Elijah Nelson), his Pica is a barely-there plot construction that is only written to serve the purpose of getting a faith-healer to lay hands on him.
After that, there is no exploration of the disorder or the psychological scars that being bullied because of Pica caused him. You would think that ideas of consumption, devouring or ingestion would lend itself to the means of revenge but nope, after being “healed” Kelly’s Pica literally no longer exists (except for a couple of small moments of stress that exist completely separate from the actual psychology of Pica) and his revenge is built solely upon the death of his mother at the hands of his bullies. The fact that it is not connected to his OCD is, in all honesty, a lazy revenge scenario that misses an opportunity to be different.
But that isn’t even close to being the end of The Unhealer’s major issues, for instance:
You have the racist white con artist Pflueger (Lance Henriksen) who steals the healing magic from the bones of a hundred-years-dead Navajo to swindle people out of their money. Swindle may be the wrong word as he can actually heal people thanks to his grave desecration and spell work, but there is absolutely no context for how this guy knows how to do this.
Literally, it takes two and a half minutes from the film’s opening to when he is suddenly imbued with serious magic and every moment of those 150 seconds is exposition-free. By the twenty minute mark, when Pflueger is out of the movie, you have learned absolutely nothing about him or the reason why he would steal this magic or any history he had with the magic he stole. He is a virtual non-entity that exists solely to die and transfer his power to Kelly.
Kelly’s mom Bernice (Natasha Henstridge) is also a blank page whose only purpose is to die and to be hit on by every adult male in town. You know nothing about her, why she is seen as a prized catch, or who she is as a mother. The relationship between Bernice and Kelly is minimally explored and when she dies at the hands of the school bullies, you don’t care.
Here is an opportunity to show a solid relationship between a boy suffering from a serious disorder and his mother who is desperate to save him, and all you get is a ghost image of a woman and mother who is more cardboard cutout than human being. Her death is the catalyst for Kelly’s revenge and yet the most you get from that death is a slight feel of boredom.
The bullies. There is no build up to their violence, its just violence that goes from one beatdown to attempted murder, to actual murder incredibly quickly. Kelly’s disorder is basically a bully gift and sure, it makes sense that his “otherness” would be asshole fodder (I’m not looking for causation here, I am completely aware of the basic bully personality type) but if these guys were as violent on a daily basis as is established in this movie, there’s no way they wouldn’t have been arrested for assault by now.
Again, these are basically BLANK characters who have no discernible motive for their brutality and there is absolutely no sense of delight at their deaths or torture because the audience has been given nothing to feel.
The whole point of revenge is to either feel pumped that the bully is getting what they deserve or to be horrified by a bully death so that you question if revenge is even the right thing to do (i.e.- the bullied becomes the bully). In the case of Kelly vs. the Bullies, none of it means anything and you are simply watching the scenes unfold without any emotion or interest at all.
And now for what I feel is the absolute worst issue plaguing this film: The Caucasian-ing of Native American folklore and people. There’s been volumes written on how Native American culture, beliefs and the people have been written and portrayed on film and TV and I’m not about to go in-depth into it. But it’s incredibly apparent that no one connected to this film even did the slightest bit of research into Native American healing folklore or history.
The two Native American characters of Red Elk (Branscombe Richmond) and Sheriff Adler (Adam Beach) are one-dimensional (an issue every character has) and are only there as the most basic and stereotypical representation of Native Americanism. Red Elk mentions only in a passing moment that his family line has protected the grave of the Shaman but gives no more information than that and Sheriff Adler has been given only the thinnest of Native American identity to hang his hat on.
At no point is there the slightest exploration of the power that is now inside of Kelly or how it’s connected to Red Elk and Adler’s tribe. There are no rules established to wield such powers or have it connect with Navajo beliefs. It’s as if the writers/director said to themselves “Wouldn’t it be cool if we made a movie about a bullied white kid who got Native American healing powers and killed the jerks who hurt him?” and then made up a bunch of legends and rituals and labelled them “Native American” without even taking a moment to ask themselves “Really? Is this the right choice we’re making here?”
There are a lot more issues with The Unhealer than I have room to go into (poor dialog, a love interest subplot that borders on inanity, a severely weird toxic masculinity/homophobia that runs throughout) but the outcome from all of them is simply this: it isn’t a good movie.
And it’s too bad because a horror movie about a kid with Pica bullied non-stop who gets their bloody revenge lends itself to some possibly seriously twisted death/get-even scenes if it were done right…and all without the cultural appropriation.
Seriously, save your money on this film.
The Unhealer is available now On Demand, Digital HD, DVD & Blu-ray
