Val Kilmer's Steam Bath of Death

The Chaos Experiment (2009)
Directed by Philippe Martinez
Screenplay by Robert Malkani

Some films are mind fucks.   The Chaos Experiment is more of a mind hand job.   It's not brilliant but it does give you some sense of mental release, though maybe not the sort of satisfying release you might get from something that is actually profound and thought-provoking.  If this metaphor is uncomfortably extended for you then you can imagine how it feels to sit through all 90 minutes of The Chaos Experiment.

Val Kilmer plays "Jimmy" which may not be his real name.  He shows up at the Grand Rapids Press--I think it's actually quaint that any earth shattering events could occur in Grand Rapids, Michigan.   Anyhow, this guy shows up saying he's got a story that the press must run.  You see, he can prove that global warming will make people go crazy and kill each other thus bringing civilization to utter collapse.   Being a conscientious scientist, Jimmy can prove his theory because he has run an experiment.  His experiment consists of luring 6 unwitting people into a steam bath and locking them inside.  The editor nods and smiles and calls the cops.  Actually he calls a specific cop, which is Armand Assante who has nothing better to do than to interrogate Val Kilmer about the people he's holding hostage.  How did Jimmy get six people locked in a steam bath?   Well, he managed to accomplish this by convincing them that it was a dating event.   Steam-dating?   Yep.   If only he was a little bit crazier then he would have been crazy enough to call it steam-dating.
Now the film goes back and forth between the interrogation, the people in the steam bath and occasional shots of Val Kilmer lying in a hospital bed and then imagining himself on a carousel.   Like I said, it's not exactly mind...blowing.  But it is mildly interesting.

Now I do have several issues of methodology with regards to the steam bath test.   First of all, is it the steam heat that drives the six people nutty or is it the fact that they're confined?  How is this supposed to relate to being "trapped" on Earth as the climate becomes more steamy?  And the fact is that two of the six people (Catherine and Christopher) knew about the nature of the experiment to begin with.   Christopher turns out to be Jimmy's doctor from the mental institution and Catherine is his girlfriend or wife or something like that.   Thus they had an unfair advantage over the other four who had no idea what was going on and they really were in some sort of Grand Rapids singles steam bath mixer.
The steam or the confinement merely confirm some character issues.  For instance, Frank is a goomba jerk of the kind that makes you wish the whole male population of New Jersey could be washed away in a big storm.  There's a special kind of overt misogyny in this brand of character that sometimes conceals a tender side, but mostly just conceals an even deeper misogyny and lack of civilized grace.  While it's a relief that he's the first to be killed (while trying to choke Jessie, I think)  it's also a shame because he was the most likely to go apeshit and just kill everyone and then suck the marrow from their bones while jerking off or something truly cinematically insane.   Okay, maybe it's for the best this film wasn't directed by anyone like Cronenberg.  
Grant is an aging jock who doesn't mind mentioning that he takes viagra because it forces people to have to think about his erect penis.   He manages to hold it together longer than the rest and when he finally does break down and get violent it turns out that the wild accusations he throws around were true.   He rightly figures out that Catherine and Christopher are in cahoots.  So the steam may have driven him to rage but the experiment was tainted by the fact that the rage he had was actually quite on the mark.  As for Margaret, I can't believe she would give up a night of listening to The Cure and cutting herself for any kind of organized dating event with strangers.   The only surprise is that two people are killed before she takes a jagged edge of tile and slasher her own throat with it.  I would have thought she would have killed herself while the others were introducing themselves and talking about their likes and dislikes.  "Likes: kittens, ponies, The Cure and boys who turn out to be gay or suicidal or both.  Dislikes:  The fact that I have utterly no ability to feel anything positive or negative whether I'm masturbating or cutting myself."   The only reason I can think that Margaret was there was as a special request because Grant and Frank seem like people who are used to having sex with people who are crying before after and during the act.
And then there's Jessie, who clearly was lured into this situation because she is the kind of woman who has an attractive body, knows this fact and also knows the monetary value of it and intends to liquidate that capital for the right settlement.   At least, that's the initial character assessment of her.   While it might be true that all people do a version of sizing up someone's attractiveness, income and potential most people are less forthright about their calculations and have the civilized veneer of hiding it under the conventional talk about "love" and "ponies" and "money doesn't matter" or whatever.  Jessie provides the fanservice of walking around and lounging with her top off long enough to show off the goods and establish her dominance of attractiveness and to inform Frank that he's out of the running and then having sized up the bath as being small time tries to leave thus sparking the crisis of the film.
The other key feature of this character is that she is not killed by anyone from inside the steam bath.  In fact she takes multiple shots in the forehead from a nail gun shot by an unknown assailant while she's looking out the broken window of the door.   This should really scotch the scientific value of the experiment because her death was artificially introduced by an outside factor and was not an organic result of the collapse of civilization in the bath.  In fact, at the moment of her death the five survivors were all cooperating and acting as a team.   This would seem to run in direct opposition to the germ of the theory.

The real shame of The Chaos Experiment is that it has more than a few moments of beautiful cinematography and music in the service of a less than stellar film.   And even the film would have been better if the nutty theory that instigated the event made more sense.  But then, maybe that's the real point:  the theory and the methodology were inherently flawed and thus the whole thing was bound to be just a pointless exercise in confinement and killing.   It was a poorly thought out experiment put together by a guy who is not all there.   Of course the methodology doesn't make sense.   This guy thinks he can get gold coins by bopping midgets on the head with a wand.   And the real villain, Christopher, just seems to get his jollies by indulging the lunatics long enough to see what new experiences he can get from them.   So he and Catherine were enjoying some thrill-kill fun while they could.   There is something interesting about how Catherine tells Christopher that he doesn't control Jimmy anymore and thus he has to kill him.  And I feel a little bad for crazy Jimmy who will probably not get another chance to work on his crazy theories.  But the question is what kind of pair of lunatics would willingly have themselves locked into a steam bath with some people?

I'm not sure what this film means for science.   Should we ignore the people who say that climate change is a danger to the world because they're all crazy?   You might say that it isn't about the science but once you mention a topic like global warming it's hard not to think about the implications.   I certainly don't agree with Jimmy's assessment of the results of global warming or with his method of proving it.   He could have locked six people up in a room with comfortable temperature and they probably would have killed each other.  Especially these six people with whom I don't think I could have tolerated spending time even in an unlocked steam bath.

I can't help but get the feeling that this film was a result of someone getting slightly cooked inside a steam bath and then with the magic of Final Draft translating their addled ravings into screenplay format.   If you lock six people in a steam bath with a screen showing this film will they also kill each other?  I don't want to find out.

Jimmy....Val Kilmer (Tombstone, Top Gun, The Doors, Real Genius, Top Secret, Batman Forever, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang)  I dare you to come up with Val Kilmer's internal monologue as you watch his face in this film.  
Detective Mancini....Armand Assante (The Mambo Kings, The Odyssey, NCIS) Oh, Armand Assante.  What else can I say?
Grant....Eric Roberts (Star 80, The Pope of Greenwich Village, The Odyssey, Cecil B. Demented, The Dark Knight) I have a friend who thinks Eric Roberts is actually a psychopath.  I'd like to use this film as evidence to the contrary but I have a feeling that there would be hard feelings if I encouraged the watching of this film as any attempt at proving a point.
Frank....Quinn Duffy (The Last Don, Game of Death, JAG, NightMan, The Nutty Professor)
Margaret...Cordelia Reynolds (CSI: Miami, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Damages, Army Wives, Cold Case)
Jessie....Eve Mauro (Miss March, CSI: NY, CSI: Miami, Bones, Torchwood, Osombie, Dexter, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Wicked Lake, Land of the Lost)
Christopher....Patrick Muldoon (Days of Our Lives, Saved by the Bell, Who's the Boss?, Melrose Place, Starship Troopers, Stigmata, Ice Spiders)
Catherine....Megan Brown (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, RoboDoc, Feast III: The Happy Finish)
Walter Grubbs, editor of the Grand Rapids Press....Ricky Wayne (Mexican Sunrise, Real Steel, The Glades, Burn Notice, Monsterwolf, House of Bones)
Lt. Clark...Doug Alchin (To Live and Die in Dixie)
Officer Briggs....Julianne Howe-Bouwens
Newspaper Comedy Writer....Mark Bonto (LOL, Real Steel, 61*)
Nurse in Hospital...Carrie Drazek (Bart Got a Room)
Nurse....Yvonne Misiak
Orderly....James Cantrell
Tara...Sarah Martinez
Waitress...Jana Veldheer (Offspring, Playback, To Live and Die in Dixie)
Press Staff 1...Eileen Briesch
Press Staff 3....Mike Karpus
Ricky...Shelby Stehlin (Video Girl, Exit 727)
Sam...Michael Travis

Cinematography by Erik Curtis (Game of Death)  If Grand Rapids looks as good as this guy makes it look then it might be worth a trip.  

Original Music by Don MacDonald (Fido, Kissed, Suspicious River)

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