Review: The Weird Kidz
Overview:
Three young boys on the cusp of their teen years tag along with the older crowd with big dreams over what a weekend of camping could become. Dug and company’s hopes to prematurely become men faces a supernatural snag when a local urban legend known as the “Night Child” reveals himself and a slew of other horrific revelations that make lingering virginities the least of anyone’s concerns.
Our Take:
If there’s one thing that the animation industry needs right now it’s more independently produced feature films. This has unfortunately become more of a lost art during a time when Disney, Pixar, and other mega-corporation animation studios reign supreme and push an increasingly homogenized aesthetic that prioritizes efficiency over creativity. That’s not to say that any product that comes from a corporate entity is going to push an agenda and be morally bankrupt, but all of this has made it harder for the little guy to jump out of the bushes and cause a big stir.
In this sense, Zach Passero’s The Weird Kidz is the type of animated project that’s become few and far between–an adult coming of age horror-comedy that’s all hand-drawn and lacks any sense of commercial objective. Unfortunately, this labor of love gets an A for effort, but fails to create a substantial impact and is akin to the type of Cryptid that gets lost to folklore rather than becoming a word of mouth urban legend.
The biggest problem with The Weird Kidz is that it feels hopelessly lost in the past–as far as a decade before Passero even started to work on this–and none of its material makes enough of an impression to get too engaged in. It’s an entertaining distraction, but an endeavor that would honestly work better as a series of shorts than a full-on feature, despite that being exactly what makes The Weird Kidz so remarkable in the first place. There’s a mentality to the film where characters say things like,”It’s craptastic” that are mock-mature.
The movie hopes to coast on crudeness alone rather than any substance underneath this outrageous approach. It makes for an important reminder that curse words, sexuality, and gratuitous violence don’t automatically make animated content subversive or appealing to adults. The Weird Kidz dwells on rudimentary animated breasts and penises like they’re uproarious comedic setpieces. There’s a charm to Passero’s gumption, but this only goes so far and it’s not enough for The Weird Kidz to succeed, despite the undeniably work and passion that’s clearly gone into this movie.
What’s most successful in The Weird Kidz is the “Night Child” Cryptid angle, which adds a welcome element of horror and mystery to this hormonal adventure. This supernatural aesthetic is the most interesting thing about The Weird Kidz, right down to the insectile design that it chooses for this creature. It’s a unique look that’s hardly groundbreaking, but it’s still better than a standard Bigfoot or Mothman. It’s at least a decision. The other stylistic element that really works well and actually attempts to do something is the hallucinogenic fantasy sequence and drug trips that occur due to the Night Child’s poisons. These two elements are interesting, but few and far between in The Weird Kidz.
It’s appreciated whenever The Weird Kidz embraces the ‘80s slasher angle. It doesn’t come out of nowhere and the film is at its best whenever it leans harder into certain genre tropes. However, it never feels totally at home. What’s even more awkward are random allusions to characters “using the force” and frenetic powers and rules to this universe that are more in service of laughs and easy gags than what actually makes sense to this story. The Weird Kidz could have adopted a nice ghost story angle where there are spooky tales within the larger frame narrative (and in fact The Weird Kidz even proposes this idea, only to then outwardly reject it). In the end, it remains pretty basic and doesn’t take enough risks. The Weird Kidz banks on a simple enough premise that thinks it in itself is interesting enough to sustain the movie.
The animation in The Weird Kidz leaves a lot to be desired, which is understandable, but still a disappointment that it doesn’t find a way to stylistically take advantage of this aesthetic and so it’s left to look akin to old Flash animations. It bears a resemblance to something that could have aired on Adult Swim alongside Apollo Justice, Hot Streets, or Tigtone. This means that it’s not as if the art style is deplorable, but it’s likely to remain a major barrier that keeps away the adult audience that this film is aimed at in the first place. Mediocre or even subpar animation doesn’t always sink a project as long as there’s still a compelling script that has something to say. The Weird Kidz doesn’t quite reach that echelon and it remains a crude oddity that’s destined to be described as “that rough-around-the-edges animated horror-comedy about Gen X’ers at summer camp.”
Some independent animated features of this nature, such as Dash Shaw’s Cryptozoo, Bill Plympton’s Revengeance, or Don Herzfeldt’s World of Tomorrow trilogy, there’s a genuine joy to be found in seeing these inventive visuals on the big screen. There’s nothing about The Weird Kidz that benefits from a cinematic presentation style and while it’s appreciated that the film has received that kind of push, even if it’s in a limited festival capacity, the huge cinematic presentation only highlights the basic nature of the movie’s chosen style.
An animated movie doesn’t need this extra level of pomp and circumstance to justify itself, but this is all to say that The Weird Kidz definitely doesn’t suffer from being watched at home on a streaming service. Outside of these simplistic visuals, there’s a really great Angelo Badalamenti-esque score that low-key might be the best part of the movie. The voice acting by the likes of Angela Bettis, Sean Bridgers, and Ellar Coltrane is fine and it’s nice to have some big names and comedic talent involved, but it’s all kind of superfluous.
The Weird Kidz is not without its merits. There’s a rudimentary message about not being afraid to follow your dreams, which is never a bad theme to fall back on–and it’s certainly a message that’s applicable to a passion project like this that took the better part of a decade to put together. However, it’s still not enough and even comes across as a little saccharine, if anything. At the end of the day, The Weird Kidz isn’t meant to be taken too seriously, but that doesn’t mean that it still can’t amount to something and set its sets a little higher. At 80 minutes, with credits, The Weird Kidz doesn’t ask much of its audience and it’s harmless enough to check out on a whim. It’s the passionate labor of eight years of work, which if nothing else, makes this movie an impressive achievement in independent animation.
