Cheap Trolling at the Expense of the Mentally Ill
I'm trying to figure out how two obvious hucksters, one with obvious mental issues and the other a childish prankster riding the coattails of another alleged documentary film-maker, could waste so much dead space in what can best be described as an "amateurish, uneven"* mess that seeks to exploit a clearly troubled soul's problems for cheap laughs.
I sincerely hope the clown who directed this trash of a mockumentary went to film school in the years since this direct-to-video-level refuse was initially released. But I somehow don't think so. If he had, he might have learned how to actually make a watchable movie.
Both this and its predecessor, 'Impaled' (2007), suffer from having been made solely to poke fun at a disturbed individual—with the likely effect of having pushed him over the edge to engage in acts that should (I hope) have landed him in an institution where he can receive the help he needs. That's it. There is no higher purpose to either of these vomit-inducing chores. I've seen student films better written and executed than these, and that is because the film students in question actually bothered to pay attention to their instructors.
Writer (barf) and director (yawn) Richard Mullenax begins by telling his audience his intentions up front: relentlessly troll a guy with serious mental illness, all for the express goal of destroying what remains of his sanity and getting his sick kicks doing it. The entire "movie" (if by 'movie', one means a torturous journey into the depraved psyche of subject and antagonist alike) does nothing but alienate his own audience with his on-camera antics detailing how he intends to humiliate Jonathon "The Impaler" Sharkey, a professional weirdo who ran for governor of Minnesota in 2006 and followed up with a barely-noticed presidential run two years later.
Mullenax's childish efforts to portray Sharkey as some kind of basket case are wasted as the subject does it all on his own without any assistance from his tormentor. Mullenax exploits paid actors, suck-up friends, and local folk to finish off a deeply disturbed man's already ruined reputation. It's nothing but an exercise in wanton cruelty for its own sake, with no real point other than to try to get the audience to engage in schadenfreude—with less than successful results. One such friend of Mullenax, Scott Nimrod, tries and fails spectacularly to intimidate Sharkey into admitting to racism, but succeeds only in exposing his own stupidity.
Another troll involves using all-but-defunct-even-in-2008 social media web site MySpace (really?) to set up a fake online crush "confessing" to things that clearly never happened.
Cleveland Movie Blog's Matt Finley summed this lame-ass attempt at a mockumentary up well enough, writing,
If, on the one hand, his terrorist-staking, cloak-wearing, blood-chugging image is all a happy hand-me-down from his pro-wrestling days – a ghoulish caricature into whose skin a savvy, attention hungry Sharkey feels most at home – then IMPALED is simply a carnival within a carnival. And Mullenax and Sharkey are merely competing hucksters each brandishing their own unique, colorful deceptions for the sheer thrill of public attention.
If, on the other hand, Sharkey is a bit too comfy in his wacky Impaler skin – if he is, in fact, mentally ill, then Mullenax is just another pop culture opportunist, conning a man who should be encouraged to seek treatment - not political office. In this case, Mullenax is boldly exploiting Sharkey’s bad wiring for the simple, selfish satisfaction of dancing in the rain of sparks.
I did a bit of research on Mullenax, and it turns out he has a long, sordid history of using people as the butt of his cheap jokes, all the while engaging in years-long campaigns to stalk, harass, and punish anyone who dares question his honesty, integrity, and alleged talent. His boasts in response to critique of 'Impaled' reveal a massive ego that has done little to earn itself even as he tries to dodge substantive criticism of the earlier documentary with insults.**
I honestly don't know (nor do I particularly care) if Mullenax has made subsequent movies, because after suffering through his trash on YouTube I found myself uninterested in exploring what later pranks he may have pulled on other victims. I did discover some evidence that he self-published a book that was supposed to be the first of a fantasy series, but excerpts do not fill me with confidence that this twit ever learned to read and write on an adult level. If he ever entertained fantasies of becoming an auteur, I sincerely hope those were dashed by reality—with a war hammer.
*: http://www.clevelandmovieblog.com/2014/06/impaled-painfully-blunt.html
**: https://moviechat.org/tt1029317/Impaler/58c7957993cef4080d8f0eaf/viewpoint-from-another-filmmaker share