Horror Bites - Her Name was Christa

This movie is gonna be spoiled....you been warned.

You know those moments when you are watching a movie, and you really get what they were going for, which leads you to an appreciation of the craft of filmmaking and screenwriting. Yet, at the same time, you aren't really enjoying the movie you're watching because that filmmaking and screenwriting you are appreciating isn't translating into something enjoyable? That's how I feel about Her Name Was Christa.

No matter what I say during this review, I really do like the ideas and use of characters that I have been built to actually like. Her Name Was Christa slowly builds the story of Stephen and his quiet and lonely life in a way that we can feel like we understand what he is going through. He's tested the waters of dating...once, then gone straight to street prostitution, before settling on a specific type of street prostitution. See, it's relatable, and honestly, a tale as old as time. This tale of love on the streets is a wholesome treat as Stephen puts all his love into Christa, the woman of his dreams. It is only in the last thirty minutes of this two-hour beast that the true horror shock nature of this story comes out. Stephen finds his new hooker girlfriend has died of a previously unknown heroin overdose in his bathroom. So he does what any person in love would, he has sex with her corpse. Not just once, but over and over, for months on end. I admit that's some effective shock value. It is even made more shocking because of how bland and mundane the main character's life has been before that. When she was alive, our lead hero didn't even want to sleep with his escort lady friend and was embarrassed about most things to do with sex. This character trait of Stephens is the main reason I had a hard time with the whole corpse sex thing. I mean, there are lots of reasons to not get behind the thought process of sex with the dead. But we are going to keep this to the standpoint of the plot of this movie.

So, here we have a man who has lost a wife due to a car accident. He is so scared and timid of anything sexual that he barely ever talks to anyone, let alone women. But in this film, he goes from being too shy to really make an effort to meet anyone to sexing up a corpse. Now, there are hints of him being unstable for the whole film, more like delusional and having hallucinatory episodes. They don't really go into much detail with these, which makes them more of a side thought. The main character is written as a meek and somewhat scared of life guy. He doesn't make that much progress in changing his life when he decides that it's okay to have sex with the dead. It's a long stretch that has a lot of issues with it. Story-wise, I really felt like what we were being shown during the very long first ninety minutes, that he never really seemed to be the kind of disturbed who would think of that. He is so plain and mild that the idea of him having the propensity for a hallucinatory imagination so strong that he can talk to his dead girlfriend is questionable. It's not like I needed to see him lose his mind and descend deeply into madness to believe he would be capable of necrophilia. But, I mean, he didn't want to have sex with her when she was alive, so I think it's a stretch to think the second she dies that he would drop his pants. I understand the idea that his passiveness would lead him to make the perfect companion out of the body of a woman he loves. Because he can make her say and do what he thinks the perfect companion would. She's dead, so she can't hurt him. I just wasn't convinced Stephen had fallen this far.

Still, as I mentioned, I get the idea behind it all and think it really worked in its shock factor. For me, the runtime hampered my enjoyment. At almost two hours long, and knowing that three-quarters of the film goes by before the shocking time, it is way too much set up to make the payoff believable. Sadly the less we know of the lead, the more likely I would be able to believe that he would have chosen to do something horrific. But we spent so much time with him that I feel like I know him, and he is not a dead person sex addict. He is a boring and shy older man. I understand that is what people always say. Oh, it's the quiet ones that have all the sex with the dead, but it just didn't work here.

I would like to recommend this one as it does manage to entertain and shock. Yet, the length and mundanity of the first part of the film make it a bit inaccessible to most viewers. Again that might be the point too.