Although it succeeds on its own terms as a passable thriller, Mark Pirro's Rage of Innocence is one of those rare, terrific movies which succeed primarily as a winning satire on an existing genre, pushing the boundaries of said genre until they burst and manifest an entirely new filmic being. In this case Rage takes as its template one of those lovable, treacly family crisis melodramas we all love to watch on Lifetime and the Hallmark Channel - movies which themselves are to some degree throwbacks to the beloved made for TV "Movies of the Week" of the glorious 1970s.
All of the cliche genre characters are here - the well-meaning but naive father figure, the devoted yet clueless mother figure, the dark, troubled teenager, the good girl patsy-next-door, the long-suffering "other woman," etc. Yet here, all of these characters are twisted into almost unrecognizable grotesques, and thus come across as bigger than life and quite memorable.
Father figure, as played by John McCafferty is a most goofy patriarch, sort of a seriocomic version of Ray Romano, befuddled yet endearing, completely oblivious to the deadly trap he falls into. Mother, as played by Tammy Klein, is a tortured yet dimwitted cipher, who hides so many skeletons in her closet that it threatens to explode at any moment. The sociopathic teenager Raven, played in a winningly frightening manner by Stef Dawson, is perhaps the best of the bunch; Raven is not merely a cartoon villain, with her schizophrenic mood swings and preposterous antisocial agenda, she comes across as virtually demonic (and at times superhuman) in her ability to wreak havoc in her immediate environment. There are eerie close-ups of Raven which, although portraying an ostensibly attractive young woman, make her look like some sort of evil crone from the bowels of hell.
The screenplay is witty and clever and takes so many narrative detours it is at times hallucinatory. After almost destroying Father and Mother, and successfully offing the Other Woman, Raven ends up triggering a blood-curdling finale which works well as a sly riff on its nearest competitor - the slasher film.
Yet a few red flags verify that Rage of Innocence is not by any means merely a renegade Lifetime tearjerker, and these are in and of themselves endearing and disarming. Firstly, there is a lot of free-flowing profanity throughout. Secondly, there is some surprising near-nudity. Plus, there are a number of clever and amusing anomalies throughout which signal the audience that this bizarre journey into a surreal suburban hell is not to be taken seriously. For example, when Raven plants a bag of weed in her enemy's desk drawer, it is an obviously a baggie of bright green cooking spice - Oregano or something - and looks nothing like what it is intended to portray. Finally, what self-respecting TV movie would dare show a close-up of a just-used condom, filled with you-know-what? No, in the great tradition of genre spoofs such as Beyond the Valley of the Dolls and Airplane!, Rage of Innocence tackles and skewers the turgid family melodrama, carving it into something wholly new and delicious, something exotic and alien yet immediately recognizable: call it "a 1970's TV Movie on steroids."
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