Make Sure Chekhov’s Gun Fires: An Analysis of a Film Critic’s Movie Review
When writing a movie review, typically you will introduce ideas at the beginning of your reviews, whether they be thoughts, feelings, etc. about a film you have just seen. Sometimes you will broach a main idea, a guiding light that should lead and frame your review. Stating and then forgetting about that light is folly that should be avoided. I came across such a error in a review for Becca Kozak‘s Sugar Rot. I brought up to the review’s author that Chekhov’s Gun must fire. What follows is an analysis of the writer’s error and the solution to it. This is the second installment in the ‘An Analysis of a Film Critic’s Movie Review’ series. The first installment can be found here: ‘Inadequacy can Teach.’
What is Chekhov’s Gun?
Chekhov’s Gun is “a narrative principle stating that if a detail is introduced early in a story, it must become significant later on. Attributed to playwright Anton Chekhov, the rule suggests that everything included should be necessary, and anything irrelevant should be removed. For instance, if a rifle is placed on stage in the first act, it must be fired by the end of the play to justify its presence. This principle applies to more than just literal objects and can include dialogue, character traits, or any other element.”
The Film
The film in this analysis is Sugar Rot (from the Fantasia International Film Festival): “Set in an ice-cream shop, Becca Kozak’s film is a relentless sensory onslaught—depraved, delicious, and unafraid to plunge into the darkest, dankest corners of the imagination. When punk girl Candy is brutally assaulted by an ice-cream man, she becomes the host of a mutant fetus, and her body begins to transform into ice cream. Featuring music from Pet Blessings, Dayglo Abortions, and Daddy Issues, SUGAR ROT channels the anarchic spirit of punk to tell a fiercely feminist story about autonomy, capitalism, and pleasure. With its cathartic cartoon gore and biting satire of anti-feminist rhetoric, it’s a bold and sticky scream of rebellion.”
Chloe Macleod Sugar Rot
The Analysis
The film critic began their movie critique of Sugar Rot with this paragraph:
Exploitation is a funny thing in the world of film. In the ’70s, the term referred to movies like I Spit on Your Grave, which features explicit sexual themes like rape, murder, and vengeance, playing horrific content for a quick buck. Similarly, another genre, Blaxploitation, is exactly what it sounds like: movies such as Blackula or Dolemite, featuring black actors becoming vampires and terrorizing the ‘hood or kicking ass as a pimp with a heart of gold. The curious thing about pictures like this is that, despite being made for a jeering audience eager for cheap thrills, they are often produced by the very groups that are being exploited.
This was the concluding portion of their review:
It’s a nasty film that’s a little too long and has an unnecessary fourth act. The director makes her point, but you might laugh, grimace, or even want to turn the film off. The typical man doesn’t even consider issues like sexual assault, abortion, or women’s needs and complaints, and addressing them is unpleasant work that only gets worse the more you ignore them.
As you can see, “exploitation” is not brought up again in the final paragraph nor how the opening paragraph’s subject matter ties into Sugar Rot. Chekhov’s Gun does not go off.
My message to the author:
The first paragraph teeters on being deletable because it’s not a review of Sugar Rot. It’s the setup for the review. The problem is that the setup is a fourth of your article.
You should not write beyond what you have to say, but with a setup that lengthy, a circle back to exploitation films (the subject of the first paragraph), but with Sugar Rot as an example of that type of film, would have put a finer point on your review; it would have brought the review full circle, and the size of the review’s opening paragraph would be more justified.
Corrected Version
The movie critic took my observations and constructive criticism to heart, trimmed their opening paragraph, and reintroduced “exploitation” film, with Sugar Rot as an example of that type of film, in the concluding paragraph of their review.
The new introductory paragraph for their Sugar Rot review:
In the ’70s, exploitation referred to movies like I Spit on Your Grave, which features explicit sexual themes like rape, murder, and vengeance, playing horrific content for a quick buck. The curious thing about pictures like that is that, despite being made for a jeering audience eager for cheap thrills, they are often produced by the very groups that are being exploited.
The new concluding segment of the final paragraph that brings back up the exploitation theme from the opening paragraph:
This is an exploitation film through and through, and like the video nasties of yesteryear, Sugar Rot is here to assault you as much as it is here to force you to think and feel.
Chekhov’s Gun now fires in the concluding paragraph of the Sugar Rot review.
Conclusion
Now the Sugar Rot review connects its dots without leaving the reader scratching their head as to the point of the review’s opening paragraph. The new ending is clear, purposeful, and better drives home its main theme, i.e., Sugar Rot is an exploitation film that is being reviewed.
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