The Reptile
NETFLIX
From the very beginning of Reptile, something feels wrong. Even before real estate agent Will Grady (Justin Timberlake) happens upon the body of his girlfriend and co-worker Summer Elswick (Matilda Lutz), nearly every interaction we see is strained and artificial. As a prologue, it’s discombobulating for sure: a story that has begun in media res, with an uneasy guarantee that more violence is to follow.
Solving Summer’s murder is assigned to Detective Tom Nichols (Benicio Del Toro) and his partner Dan Cleary (Ato Essandoh, best known for his devastating performance in Django Unchained). It’s a case littered with various suspicions and red herrings. For one thing, every suspect seems threatening or barely able to contain themselves. Something is off about Summer’s reclusive ex-husband Sam Gifford (Karl Glusman). Something is definitely off about the antagonistic Eli Phillips (Michael Pitt), who has been stalking the Grady family for years. And the Gradys can’t be discounted either. Timberlake plays Will’s grief as both shaky and unreadable, only breaking when he interacts with his controlling mother (Frances Fisher).
The strength of Reptile is realizing that its scope is wider than this core group of characters. It’s also its weakness. Each piece of the puzzle moves slowly, refusing to fall in place for most of the runtime. Some of the exposition is clunky. At times the procedural scenes run out of steam, only to pick up their pace later. Certain sequences and subplots that seem important vanish or abruptly end without any resolution or explanation.
However, one thing is for sure: it is nearly impossible to tell where this film is going or how anything is going to add up.
Without giving anything away, it becomes clear that Reptile is less of a murder mystery and more of a character study, as well as an uneasy critique of police culture. It is hard to discern first-time director Grant Singer’s intentions here. There are cringeworthy scenes where cops make homophobic jokes, cart inflatable dolls around the office and casually start a betting pool for who murdered Summer over lunch. These scenes, among others, could be interpreted as criticism or levity, but the tone is hard to pin down. The same could be said about other questionable sequences, one involving crutches and another following a camera down a hallway punctuated by mylar balloons. It doesn’t help that these moments are punctuated by an unsubtle score by Yair Elazar Glotman, which paints these scenes as dead serious when they should be more ambiguous or uncomfortable.
In spite of all, what holds the film together is Del Toro’s performance (who is also a co-writer and producer here). He has built a 30+ year career on playing a wide range of characters, from the highly eccentric to chillingly inscrutable. Nichols is a mix of both. As his investigation broadens and becomes a personal nightmare, the filmmaking becomes much more gripping and effective.
What’s surprising is how many of these sequences are elevated by the presence of his wife, Judy (Alicia Silverstone), who aids in his investigation and gives him the moral support he needs at home. Their chemistry is by far the most memorable thing in this film, having the lived-in quality of a real-life relationship, which is somewhat true (the duo co-starred as lovers in Excess Baggage and dated for a few years in the mid ‘90s). What anchors the film is the idea that Nichols has a home life worth protecting and fighting for, and every decision he makes will determine whether it can survive. As the body count inevitably rises, this becomes the real crisis of the film: that it will eventually hit too close to home, and how far a man will go to preserve the little he has, as well as his soul.