Long on the verge of retiring, cult comedy director Kevin Smith regained the filmmaking bug when he saw a Gumtree ad, where a homeowner was offering a living situation free of charge, under the condition that the lodger dress up as a walrus. While this ad turned out to be a prank by someone, it did get the wheels spinning in Smith’s head and he decided to take that story and make a horror movie out of it. Now we have the the trailer for Tusk, which stars Justin Long as naive podcaster and Michael Parks as the crazed old man who wants to turn him into a walrus.
From this first look, it is quite apparent that Tusk can be considered much more a horror film than, Kevin Smith’s previous film, Red State and it looks like it might actually be disturbing. Of course, this is Kevin Smith we are talking about and the film still seems to have a humorous side to it, including many jokes involving Canada, which is where the film takes place. Also, the trailer makes a sly nod to the fact that Smith does more podcasting than filmmaking these days by having the text “from writer, director, and podcaster Kevin Smith.” While Kevin Smith is very much a “love him or hate him” director these days, I have to say that I am quite intrigued by Tusk. Red State proved that Smith is able to do more than one type of film and I will be very interested to see if he can pull off what looks to be a twisted horror film. Tusk is scheduled to open on September 19