Batman: Ashes To Ashes French Fan Film Is DOA

Last week, the new French fan film, Batman: Ashes To Ashes, tore up the internet, as websites, bloggers and Twitterers raved about the 17-minute flick that mixed Sin City-style visuals with Batman’s Gotham City.

The fan film presents a tale of thugs who steal a ruby (sort of) because a priest put them up to it…or maybe it was the Joker, and…um…people die and there’s a lot of crying, and then Batman (who’s barely in it) sits in a cinema and…oh, I can’t tell you. I’m not avoiding spoilers here; I really can’t tell what the hell happens. In fact, the film’s popularity is just as incomprehensible as the movie itself, and believe me, this flick makes no sense at all.

True, I was offended watching a woman bash her baby daughter’s brains in while having sex on all fours with the Joker in front of her husband who’s bound and gagged with his eyes peeled open so that he has to watch, “forcing” him to blind himself with spikes that are attached to his hands in order to avoid witnessing the carnage before him. I kinda understood where he was coming from.

But that’s not why this movie sucks.

Being disturbing is fine if you actually have something to say—George Carlin’s infamous “words you can’t say on TV” routine was the height of impropriety back in the day; Jodie Foster’s The Accused messed me up for days after I saw it on the big screen; and even Eli Roth’s torture porn spectacle, Hostel, attempted something akin to commentary on the popular view of Americans as ugly users. In all these cases, the viewer gained insight as a result of examining (or enduring) offensive material.

Ashes To Ashes, on the other hand, has nothing to say; it’s merely a train wreck of cheap shock value, style-over-coherence editing and disjointed writing. I suppose one could argue that it’s always worked for David Lynch, but this is a fan film, these guys aren’t Lynch, and heck, even Lynch isn’t what he used to be anymore. The handful of gorgeous effects shots “inspired” by Sin City will make a lovely calling card for the visual effects houses involved, but otherwise, Ashes to Ashes should be buried and forgotten. Lest anyone miss my point, I think Roger Ebert said it best in his famous review of North:

I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it. Hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like it. Hated the implied insult to the audience by its belief that anyone would be entertained by it.

Unconvinced? See for yourself below, but remember, this is NSFW.