I consider myself a smart person. I think it’d even be fair to call me a “smarty-pants.” I’ve read a lot of books, read and seen a lot of plays and movies, have a pretty wide range of interests like astronomy, philosophy, history and politics. I have a Master’s degree (in playwriting, but still), used to read the New York Times every day, I even once finished a Saturday NYT crossword puzzle in pen. I wear glasses, for Chrissakes. If you name a “smart guy” signifier, I probably have it.
But boy, do I love dumb movies. Almost exclusively movies. And I’m not talking the “so dumb, it’s smart” kind. Or the “wink wink we’re actually smart but here are some puns” comedies (which I do also like). I mean, the dummy dum-dum horror and action movies that treat the laws of physics, logic and reality like inconveniences and barrel forth with the confidence of a drunk sophomore frat boy in a dirty white hat and jeans.
Of course, yes, I love me a quiet, introspective independent film. Even ones with subtitles. The kind that when you get to the end, you scratch your head and say, “So what part of that actually happened? Did any of it happen? Were they dead the whole time?” Those are great.
But I’m talking about the made for 25 bucks, shot in Canada/Bulgaria/South Africa, starring people whose names you will never know or remember (except for maybe Jason Statham) kind. The kind that you stumble across on streaming when you wander blindly into the movie section and just pick something at random.
I know I’m not an original in this. Smart people have loved dumb things since, I don’t know, Aeschylus’ time. I assume that Homer was The Fast and the Furious of its day. Or at least that’s what every high school English teacher ever has tried to convince their students. Popular things are often the dumbest of things.
But my love of those kind of movies is the simple brazenness of them. It’s someone tapping you on the shoulder, getting your attention and then picking your pocket. You may not like the game, but you have to admire the gamer. If only because they clearly don’t care.
I recently watched one of these on Netflix. It’s a shark movie. Of course it’s a shark movie. Shark movies are, almost without fail, the dumbest of movies. Because sharks are ridiculous. They are prehistoric creatures that roam the seas, they never stop moving, they never stop eating, they’re intellectually terrifying, but, in reality, something that 99% of the population will never encounter. They are completely limited to one environment and it’s an environment that humans can not survive in for very long, anyway. We could reduce shark attacks to near zero by simply avoiding swimming at a bunch of beaches.
And yet, also without fail, at least seven movies about shark attacks drop every year. I’d like to believe that there is some ancient, unevolved, core part of our brains that still see sharks as the most threatening creature alive. Some part of our brains’ architecture that still thinks it’s a little blobby fish, bopping around the Pre-Cambrian seas and suddenly devoured by a vengeful god with a mouth full of teeth. And when we see a shark pop up on our screens, that part shrieks and our nervous system responds. We squirm and squeal and slap our seatmates’ arms to warn them. And it’s all involuntary.
But I’m pretty sure that any competent neurologist or evolutionary biologist would say that’s all literally impossible. And any competent sociologist would tell me that our fears of sharks have been socially coded for 50 years now, thanks to Stephen Spielberg and a malfunctioning robot. And any economist or MBA can show me spreadsheet after spreadsheet about how lucrative shark movies are, pointing to the annual Shark Week and the enduring popularity of sharks in general. Our shark fascination is almost definitely a modern invention.
And so the shark movies keep on coming. But now you have to get clever about it. Or, rather, dumb. Because there are only so many beaches. We had 4 Jaws movies. You just can’t send a kid out on a floaty and have them get chomped up. You have to bring them to new environments, new locations, exotic locales.
That’s when you run into the first stumbling block: sharks live in the water. They are decidedly (and thankfully) not amphibious. If you want to get shark off the beach, you have to bring the water to the people. That’s what this movie does: there’s a hurricane, a storm surge and flooding. Perfect environment for a shark.
But then you also have to contend with the why? Sharks can go anywhere in the ocean (depending on the water temp). They’re not exactly running away from a hurricane. So what did these filmmakers add? A tanker truck full of blood. Why is there a tanker truck full of cow’s blood? Do you really, actually care? I do not.
In fact, as the movie starts, and you know it’s a shark movie, they waste no time in telling you it’s a shark movie, your first thought is how are they going to get the sharks to stay inland? Then the tanker truck full of cow’s blood cracks out and rings the dinner bell. Because of course why not?
And that’s what I mean about dumb movies. They’re different than bad movies. I’ve seen bad movies. Some of them even want to make you think they’re dumb. But there’s always an undercurrent of “hey, we know this is dumb” that gives away the game. The truly dumb movies, the absolutely stoopid-with-two-Os movies don’t pretend that they’re better than all of this. They say, boldly, bet you thought I wasn’t going to do this? Joke’s on you, buddy, I’m DUMB. They don’t want to secretly be clever. They want to have fun, create maximum chaos and go out in a blaze of ridiculousness.
A truly dumb movie is written with abandon. I worked with a writer who, when we hit a plot point we couldn’t really explicate or make sense of, but we still needed it, he would say, “Let’s just roll up the windows and drive fast.” That’s what dumb movies do. They’re not really trying to fool you into not noticing that’s not how the world works. They simply don’t care if you notice. They’re already onto the next thing. By the time you’ve thought, “Wait, why would that —,” someone is getting chomped by a shark. And they make sure that the person getting chomped sorely deserves said chomping.
Back in college, this very smart woman dated a sweet, kind and absolutely dumb guy. When people asked her why, she would say that he was like a vacation. If you watch The Boys, on that show, the smartest person in the world would regularly give herself a lobotomy so she could enjoy Taco Bell and reality TV before her brain regenerated. Dumb movies are kind of like that.
But, as a writer, I also admire the willingness to leave logic and rationality behind in favor of something cool, something bold, something weird, and trusting that your audience is going to make the leap with you. So much of writing, especially these days, is navigating a gauntlet of “why would they do that?” Most of the notes you get are about answering questions for the least curious and/or most skeptical audience possible. You start with a flight of fancy, but then have to meticulously explain the mechanics of flight at every turn.
Or…you can just jam a tanker truck full of cow’s blood against a Civil War statue and bring the sharks into people’s houses.
Oh, and yes, the movie is called Thrash and calling it dumb is, for me, the highest of praise. I had a blast watching it in my house, I would have had a blast watching it in a theatre, I laughed and jumped and then laughed at myself for jumping and would watch it again.
I rarely get more inspired to write than when I see something that’s just going for it. Not trying to cushion the blows. Not trying to tighten every plot point. Just diving in head first and taking off in the direction of fun. It makes me want to write with more boldness, more confidence, more style. To roll up the windows and drive it like I stole it.
So here’s the dumb movies. The movies where Jason Statham has some totally boring job and yet also breaks necks. The movies where teens find an obviously cursed object and decide to play with it anyway. The movies where some animal that doesn’t belong wherever it is gets loose and starts with the chomping and the tearing. We need those movies. If only to forget about the deadening logic of our reality.