‘God Is A Bullet’ Review: A Shallow Attempt At Modern Exploitation
Mary Beth McAndrews
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The modern exploitation film is a hard thing to create. They require a careful touch, one that understands how to craft extreme violence with purpose rather than reveling in the destruction of bodies for sick pleasure. Nick Cassavetes aimed to create such a thing with his new film in almost a decade God Is A Bullet. However, despite this being a passion project for the director, Cassavetes’ script and direction lack any sort of complexity or subtlety to the point that God Is A Bullet becomes another derivative hyper-violent action-thriller with nothing new to say about violence or revenge. It’s instead an over-long slog through the desert that revels in ripping women apart in the name of male character development.
The first ten minutes of God Is A Bullet introduce us to our main players and central conflict through child abductions, sprays of blood, a violent sexual assault, and two brutal murders for good measure. This is how we quickly learn that Case (Maika Monroe) was kidnapped from a parking lot as a kid by a cult, and now that same cult has kidnapped Gabi, daughter of Detective Bob Hightower (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau). The cult also murders her mother (and Bob’s ex-wife) as well as her new husband. Why? Because they can.
What follows is a tale of revenge as a grown-up Case and Bob team up to seek vengeance on the cult that destroyed their lives. But frustratingly we learn almost nothing about the cult, other than it’s made up of heavily tattooed, angry white men and led by the king of the angry white men, Cyrus (Karl Glusman). There are also a few women, like Case, who’ve been acquired as trophies to be tortured, raped, and drugged until they’re no longer useful.
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But other than that, this cult is painfully underdeveloped. Quick flashes of blood rituals and young girls chained up in cages tease a demented group dedicated to Satan, but the script never engages deeper than that. This leaves the so-called cult feeling like nothing more than a bunch of women-hating men who like terrible tattoos and heavy metal. In turn, the stakes are never properly heightened and the violence, while nasty, is also incredibly generic.
With a lack of proper development of the film’s central villains, its two-and-a-half hour runtime feels like a repetitive slog where Case and Bob shoot at some tattooed henchmen, they get their asses handed to them by said henchmen, Case gets raped, they escape, rinse, repeat. It’s a frustrating cycle of violence that has nothing unique to say. In fact, God Is A Bullet actively refuses to engage with any type of actually subversive violence.
Instead, everything is rooted in hating women and seeing them as nothing more than objects. The cult does its dirty work with solely young girls; Case’s whole story is centered on her sexual, physical, and emotional trauma; Bob’s journey is only possible with the abduction of his daughter; and every other female character is mercilessly beaten for no apparent reason other than to shock audiences.
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Now, as a woman who loves and consumes horror, I strongly believe that violence perpetuated against female bodies in film is necessary and possible; we can’t shy away from the ugliness of the world and the horrors women face on a daily basis. But depicting such violence comes with a responsibility to ensure that these acts are being executed for a reason. Sorry, Cassavetes, but entertainment value is not a reason to pump a film full of rape, physical assault, and more instances of a woman being called “bitch” rather than her actual name.
Frustratingly, at times, there are whispers of Cassavetes trying to engage with the nature of toxic masculinity and how that manifests. But, that’s quickly shoved aside for another nighttime bar brawl with a rattlesnake (OK, the snake part is interesting, I will admit). This isn’t about trying to tell a story about catharsis; it’s about trying to attract a very particular audience who will engage with surface-level violence rather than question it.
Monroe and Coster-Waldau do what they can with a script that doesn’t see their characters as more than revenge story archetypes. Monroe really is trying to make Case more than anthropomorphized Female Trauma and bring complexity to a character who is defined by her pain. And again, there are glimmers of something interesting in her story, but the trajectory of her character arc reduces her to nothing more than an object to prop up the men of the film. It’s another instance of Cassavetes refusing to engage with any sort of nuance in regard to female characters and what it means to brutalize them for an entire film.
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Coster-Waldau doesn’t have much to play with, either. Bob is as plain as a piece of paper with his predictable journey from devout Christian to non-believer. Unfortunately, no amount of face tattoos could make Bob Highwater interesting enough to care about for 90 minutes, let alone two-and-a-half hours. His journey is the center of the story and yet we have no real reason to cheer for him. This is a film that would be better served just following Case instead of trying to center yet another violent thriller on a sad white man with a scruffy beard and at least one divorce under his belt.
Modern exploitation movies are possible. Violence on screen, especially violence geared toward women, is possible as long as it’s purposeful and not done with the sole intention to shock. But with God Is A Bullet, all of the violence is so predictable that no amount of blood or tattered flesh can make it feel impactful. Somewhere here there’s a kernel of an interesting idea. But instead, Cassavetes gets in his own way with a bloated attempt at exploitation that goes so far as to be more boring than interesting. If you’re looking for a modern exploitation movie, just watch Candy Land instead.
Summary
With ‘God Is A Bullet’, Nick Cassavetes gets in his own way with a bloated attempt at an exploitation film that goes so far as to be more boring than interesting.
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