There’s a relatively new – what? – art form? – called the “reaction video”. There are tons of them on YouTube. It’s when the camera is trained on somebody as they react to a video that they – not you – are watching. The latest spate of reaction video’s involves the quasi snuff film, “1 Lunatic, 1 Ice Pick” allegedly posted by Luka Magnotta, the already infamous kitten-killer that the police never bothered to arrest back in 2010. I’ll just refer to him as “The Moron”.
In the spirit of these reaction videos, I’m watching “1 Lunatic, 1 Ice Pick” as I record this commentary. I’ve seen this before, so forgive my clinical approach. I have a few things to say about this whole situation. First of all, if you don’t want to hear this, stop the video right now. While I believe that living with your head in the sand is the very reason so many bad people get away with doing bad things, I believe in an individual’s right to remain ignorant and oblivious.
If you choose to be enlightened – and exempt from jury duty – stay tuned… but please don’t go running to that army of grief and trauma counsellors once it’s over. What a crock that is! When in the long history of humanity did we suddenly become so fragile that we couldn’t cope with the concept that bad things happen in the world? In the ’60s, we saw dead and wounded Vietnam soldiers every night on the news. It’s credited with having caused the early and complete withdrawal from that heinous war. Sometimes we NEED to be sickened by the evils of Man.
So far this video has shown the victim nude and loosely bound, slowly rolling on a bed. It looks like he’s drugged. Then the video jumps to a different angle of the victim – now dead and partially decapitated – and “The Moron” stabs the body exactly 100 times. It’s not manic, not uncontrolled. Very deliberate. And we never actually see a murder.
We all know that defence lawyers are lining up around the block like teenies waiting to buy Justin Beiber tickets just to defend this Moron. Go for it; we all have the right to the best defence possible. But don’t try to pull the insanity card with this one.
He’s sick, yes, but he’s too calculating to be beyond reason. He knows right from wrong. His editing proves it. The fact that he promoted this video on YouTube 10 days before the murder proves it. And his flight to europe proves it.
Right now I’m seeing “The Moron” – and I’m sure the prosecution can reasonably prove it is Luka under that hoodie – use a knife on his poor victim, slowly slicing him, and – off camera – removing his head and limbs. This looks like on-the-fly editing. He’s turning the camera on and off at certain points of this crime. To me, that means he’s controlling exactly what we see. He has presence of mind throughout this exhibition.
And what we see is very familiar. There is overwhelming evidence here that “The Moron” is a copycat. An unimaginative, very untalented, copycat. The name of his video is “1 Lunatic, 1 Ice Pick”, based on a 2007 viral video called “2 Girls, 1 Cup”, and a 2008 viral video called “3 Guys, 1 Hammer”, which is an actual snuff video.
So, derivative title, and derivative music. The song is from the movie “American Psycho”. Not very clever.
I’ll fast forward a bit.
Oh, here’s where “The Moron” allegedly has sex with his poor victim’s body. But its obviously faked. Sure, he uses the victim’s severed arm to play with himself first, but here “The Moron” is fully dressed and obviously not sexually aroused – he probably can’t rise to the occasion. He’s performing for the camera – for his intended audience… calculated premeditation.
Okay, and now we’re seeing the so-called cannibalism in the video. But this is faked, too. “The Moron” now cuts his victim with a fork and knife – so ineptly that he finally has to use his fingers to remove the piece and place it on the fork, which he merely holds in front of the camera.
Again, sanity rears it head as “The Moron” does not eat his victim. No evidence of cannibalism in this video.
You know, lazy police departments all over North America are trying to pin their own grisly murder cases on this Moron, but it just wouldn’t make sense. This guy is all about getting attention, so if he had done this sort of thing before, we’d all know about it. Unfortunately, there are plenty of other people out there who are chopping up people.
This sequence takes far too long, so I’ll fast forward.
Here “The Moron” places a dog – some people have suggested it’s a cat or rabbit, but you hear a dog whimper earlier in the video – he places a dog next to the poor victim’s torso and the dog begins to eat it.
And at this point I realized that “The Moron” had copied the entire video. “1 Lunatic, 1 Ice Pick” is an incredibly bad remake of Nacho Cerda’s critically acclaimed “Aftermath”, a short horror film with high praise for its cinematography. Every element – rubbing the victim’s face, mutilating and dissecting the body, the masturbation, photographing the corpse and the necrophilia, and feeding of the corpse to a pet dog happens in the exact same sequence. More proof that “The Moron” knows exactly what he’s doing.
I have to say this: Last year here at Vancouver’s Out On Screens film festival, they showed a well-promoted movie called “Life and Death of a Porno Gang”. While nobody was actually killed in the making of that movie, it still graphically – and relentlessly – showed rape, murder by bludgeoning, murder by chainsaw decapitation, sodomy, bestiality, necrophilia – and many more horrors than I care to mention here. That was considered entertainment, as was the film “Aftermath”.
Maybe today’s permissive society should be on trial here. “The Moron” isn’t a monster who spontaneously went mad and committed unthinkable atrocities. He’s a pathetic loser trying to get some attention, and who drew from a very public and permitted well of cinematic influences to get it.
Here in Canada, which is notoriously soft on crime, they’ll probably let this Moron out in 10 years or so, and he’ll finally cash in on his narcissistic behaviour by hosting some online horror film review website.
That is, until the animal rights people get to him.