“Guns Akimbo” isn’t billed as a horror movie, but it should be. Its premise alone—an online troll targets the wrong anarchist group and wakes up with two pistols bolted to his hands—is horrific. The protagonist this happens to is Miles (Daniel Radcliffe), firmly in his I’m not Harry Potter anymore phase. The film is an amalgamation of dark comedy and body horror. It’s also done with an intense, chaotic filming style reminiscent of “Crank” mixed with “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.” But the film is dark. Miles is dragged down an almost never-ending host of bad guys who want to kill him throughout the film’s run-time. Of course it’s horror.
“Guns Akimbo” jumps off from the start into a zany world of insane gunfights, satire, and an almost cartoonlike plot. It’s a takedown of online trolling culture, as well as a commentary with our Internet obsession and desensitization to violence. The film’s villain is Skism—an underground, livestream deathmatch organization. After some exposition with coder Miles explaining his rootless, pathetic existence (he codes for an unethical corporation run by a steroid-head and Instagram-stalks his ex-girlfriend), “Guns Akimbo” blasts into high gear. Bored with his life, Miles starts trolling one of Skism’s livestreams while drunk. He’s warned to back off by the admin, uses this as rage-fuel to continue, leading him to be kidnapped, outfitted with pistols crudely bolted onto his hands, and given his task: he has hours to kill a ranking player (a fun Samara Weaving) or be killed himself.
‘Fight Club’ Meets ‘Scott Pilgrim’
This is an odd film. Its plot is absurd—and cannot be taken seriously—yet its concepts, themes, and characterization beg deeper consideration. Miles’s predicament is shown with satire—a keyboard warrior’s hands are turned against him—while painting the film’s chief villain (a completely unhinged Ned Dennehy) in a serious, dark light. He’s sadistic and cruel. He’s basically Brad Pitt from “Fight Club” on steroids, except here he wants to torture innocent people and not just attack the system. He also looks like Pinhead with a bad ink job. Dennehy commits to the performance, though, where a weaker actor might have botched it. His Riktor is a caricature of the highest order.
For most of the film’s run, Writer/Director Jason Lei Howden has a blast (pun intended) with his premise, and the movie’s most darkly humorous bits are watching Radcliffe—through Miles—try to use his hands to open doors, get dressed, etc., without firing off one of the guns. He does surprisingly well. As Miles heads off on the run, Howden has some more fun with him though cops that ask him to put the guns down (he can’t), a meeting with his ex, Nova (Natasha Liu Bordizzo), and one violent run-in after another with Weaving’s ‘Nix.’ She’s a broken woman and a master assassin. She shoots up half the city trying to kill Miles—who has no experience—and I’ll eat my words if Nix wasn’t used as direct inspiration for a similar character in Statham’s high-octane “The Beekeeper.” She plays a true sociopath. The scariest part about her is not that she’s trying to kill Miles, but it doesn’t matter who he is. She’d try to kill anybody if given the chance.
Online Trolling and its Consequences
“Guns Akimbo” was shot in Auckland, New Zealand, but the film smartly never places its happenings. The city looks bleak—at times—and other times looks bright and normal. One of the film’s most satirical bits involves Miles walking through downtown in a robe and just his boxers (he can’t get dressed) commenting on how it’s been so long since he walked down the street without his face in his phone everything “looks HD.”
“Guns Akimbo” only came out in 2019. That’s important. Aside its gore and “Zombieland”-level 4th wall breaks, the film’s a keen commentary on social media and modern society. It’s purposeful that Miles is a vegan and ‘hates violence’—yet he spends his nights engaging in the type of rage-baiting troll behavior that leads to online bullying and the toxic human disconnection that makes the film’s events seem plausible. Skism is one big game to its viewers; the only ones who feel its effects are, ironically, its players. Howden is heaping massive social commentary here. Because it’s buried in bodies and violence, we accept it more easily.
Radcliffe is at Top Form
Radcliffe is a joy here. He did “Horns” and “Swiss Army Man” before this and has clearly been trying to vary his resume. He was also great in the romantic comedy “What If,” alongside Zoe Kazan. Radcliffe puts thought into his roles and chooses interesting films (“The Woman in Black” for example), refraining from simply picking whatever role will separate him from his “Harry Potter” fame.
What works about his performance in “Guns Akimbo” is that while the movie is completely insane, Miles is not. He freaks out, panics, entreats people to help, etc., before ultimately accepting the reality of his predicament. Radcliffe plays the everyman, letting the crazy slide off his shoulder until he becomes the crazy, in a normal sort of way. As he goes head-to-head with first Nix and then Riktor, Radcliffe’s greatest accomplishment is letting us know he still has his humanity intact despite all the bonkers things he’s done. He’s a protagonist, not an anti-hero. Maybe he becomes one at the end. It’s up for debate. I can only thank god that they didn’t make a sequel, and we never got a chance to find out.
Horror and Explosive Action Amidst its Satire
“Guns Akimbo” is rated hard ‘R,’ and if you’ve seen any of the “Deadpool” series or Samara Weaving’s “Ready or Not,” you’ll get some idea of the graphic violence on display here. The cartoon-level on-screen narrations reduce the impact of some of the scenes—though nothing can erase its end sequence, showing Nix eviscerating a number of goons with semi-automatic guns, knives, bludgeons, and a chaingun. “Guns Akimbo” humanizes her towards the end, though, and it makes a nice treatment. Weaving is completely insane here (much more than “Ready or Not”). It’s a shame she wasn’t nominated for… something.
And while “Guns Akimbo” weaves in and out of so many genres—action, drama, rom-com, one-person-army, crime, thriller—it becomes hard to track, I think the studio did a disservice by not also labelling it horror. It’s not straightforward horror like “Halloween” and “Psycho,” nor even like “Insidious” or the aforementioned “Ready or Not.” But its premise—online violence so real it becomes real-life violence—is apropos and legitimately scary. We’ve all had an online interaction that went too far or seen others attacked by online threats. The real fear here is that the people we think are sociopaths online are really sociopaths in real life. That, on top of the film’s messaging that living through our screens leads to human disconnection—and how that disconnection leads to violence—makes it an interesting genre film. “Guns Akimbo,” aside its cartoonish violence, is a mirror—albeit horrifying—to a culture built—and sustained—by online rage.
