[Update 03/23/2021: Need to redo this review completely. Fix the screenshots
also.]Like an Americanized version of Pasolini's TEOREMA (or maybe Miike's VISITOR Q), HESHER is the story of a mysterious stranger who briefly enters the lives of a family and leaves just as quickly, but not before changing their lives forever.
Young T.J. is having a shitty life. His mother recently died in a car wreck and the grief has sent his father so deep into his shell that he rarely even gets off the sofa. Then, at school this dork-looking bully beats the crap out of him all the time. Added to that, every time he gets on his bike he seems to wreck. After one gnarly wreck he gets mad at a nearby half-constructed house and breaks out the main window, unknowing that the house is the squat pad for the long-haired, greasy looking rocker named Hesher. After this encounter, Hesher begins following T.J. and eventually starts squatting in his garage. But Hesher isn't a guardian angel sent from Heaven, if anything he make T.J.'s family's life even shittier. But yet, somehow Hesher teaches them how to man up and push through their misery...or something. I don't know, I was too busy setting my house on fire to pay attention.
I liked this movie. It's nothing original or groundbreaking, but Joseph Gordon-Levitt is great, so is Natalie Portman, Piper Laurie, Rainn Wilson, Devin Brochu and honestly everybody in the movie. The story is entertaining, but the acting is what really pushes the film to a higher level. Also, the filmmakers had the good taste to use mostly Cliff Burton-era Metallica songs instead of that satan-awful butt rock they've been shoving down our ears for the last few decades. Definitely worth a rent.
