Extra Ordinary is about Rose Dooley, a seemingly ordinary driving instructor in a small Irish town who actually is well known for having supernatural talents which she has not used in decades because of a tragedy. She decides to take a chance to help a family under attack from a Satanist couple living among them. Will she be able to help them or put them in more danger?
Extra Ordinary is the directorial debut feature film for Mike Ahern and Enda Loughman, and for first time filmmakers, it is a really strong film. They have a distinctive style and off beat sense of humor which they infuse into a horror rom com that suggests if Edgar Wright is looking for an heir apparent, they could be at the head of the line to mentor. They present the town and their characters as ordinary and possibly bonkers for interpreting everything as supernatural, which seems absurd except everything is supernatural! Even the supernatural is not as impressive as it sounds and can run the spectrum of mildly annoying to homicidal. The directors subvert our expectations.
Extra Ordinary’s strength is its editing style, which highlights and does not step on the acting. They wait a beat too long, suddenly shift the camera angle or use jump cuts to compare and contrast the character’s mood with their surroundings. Everyone is so wrapped up in their own emotions and drama that visually they are often depicted as cutting themselves off from the world, very similar to the ghosts littered throughout the film. Also I can tell that Ahern and Loughman are horror movie fans because they make visual and verbal references to classic horror films. They definitely have a seventies aesthetic.
The narrative is punctuated with clips from Vincent Dooley’s Inventing the Extraordinary series played on VHS tapes, which I thoroughly enjoyed and never got tired of, but objectively could not quite strike the balance of whether someone had to play it or using it to introduce a new segment. If the latter, it needed to be done more often and at more regular intervals, but if the prior, would detract from the unfolding action. It worked for me, but structurally it could have used more revision regarding placement logic. I prefer seeing clips than having an unrealistic prose dump so I will happily sign off on this device.
I absolutely love Extra Ordinary’s premise: a thirty-eight year old single woman who actually looks like most women, not a hot teenage girl who can do back flips while saying pithy one liners, is the hero. Her solitary existence is quickly established at the beginning of the movie from work to hanging out pants less in her family’s home eating microwave dinners and screening voicemails. She is working really hard not to stand out, but apparently no one else got the message. I finally had a protagonist whom I found extremely relatable. Maeve Higgins is an absolute treasure as Rose, and I would watch her in a series.
Extra Ordinary finally gave us a normal woman getting the hottest, nicest guy in town, Martin Martin, a widow and dad, whom Barry Ward plays. I even liked when the narrative briefly shifted back in time and used a voice mail as a transition to introduce him. Usually I prefer a chronological narrative, but the movie is deft at clearly conveying its story. Ward should have Martin Freeman’s career. He is genuinely funny, shows James McAvoy levels of acting talent without needing CGI and is actually attractive unlike the simian featured Freeman. Unlike other movies that use the trope of the hot widow bachelor, this film’s humor really rests on exploring the complications of such relationships to its furthest, most ridiculous corners.
Will Forte, who is probably the most recognizable actor in the cast to Americans, plays an aging rock star eager to resurrect his career. I love Forte in all his incarnations whether independent serious respected films such as Nebraska or apocalyptic comedy series like The Last Man on Earth, but if he is not your cup of tea, you may have problems with a good portion of the movie. Forte could have easily played Vincent as well though I loved Risteard Cooper as the beloved dad. Does anyone know why Irish filmmakers love to cast Forte as their resident American? It is not just Extra Ordinary. He was in a serious supporting character in Run & Jump. His turn in this film is entirely played for laughs. Paired with Claudia O’Doherty, who plays his Australian unceremoniously practical wife, she pumps the breaks just when he can spin endless streams of ridiculousness. She is like the viewer who watches a movie and keeps crapping on it.
Extra Ordinary actually has a compelling underlying message. Do not allow trauma to ruin your life and suppress your talents. Ghosts are not just spirits who are trapped and cannot move on, but people who live in isolation and are stuck in the past. That trauma is never minimized, but should not stand in the way of joy and love. Once you exercise your talent, your outlook on quotidian life will change, but for talent to really grow, it not only needs to be practiced in the open. It also needs love in all its forms, not just romantic, through the community, which consists of friends, family and neighbors. It is unexpectedly sweet.
While watching Extra Ordinary, I actually thought that the lines were quotable and would still be funny out of context, but I am totally wrong. The cast really bring to life the writer’s words and intentions. They are comedic geniuses, and you need to see it for yourself to fully understand. I will still try. Rose’s sister encourages her, “Christy Burke’s wife has gone to jail for infanticide. He is practically single now, no kids or nothing. You should call him up.” I think that Irish accent only makes it funnier.
Some movies are completely not funny. Others are only begrudgingly funny in a theoretical ha ha way, but are a waste of time. The rest are funny, but never elicit audible laughs. The best and rare comedies are literally laugh out loud funny for their entirety. Extra Ordinary falls somewhere in between the latter two categories. It may have helped if the DVD came with subtitles because I had to rewind to catch every word. I would suggest giving the film your complete attention and not multitask to get the best results.
In terms of horror, Extra Ordinary is mostly traditional horror, but not frightening. The Satanic elements are mostly self-explanatory whereas it takes some time to get adjusted to the remaining supernatural’s logic, but mostly works. The supernatural is mostly depicted through everyday sights because there probably was not a lot of money for CGI. When CGI is used, it is mostly modest. It is a comedy and treats the supernatural as a chance to get more laughs by aiming for gross out humor, but does not push boundaries too far and probably will not alienate audiences. It is the traditional scatological catalogue: farts, puking, sex and dick jokes. This toilet humor gradually increases as it nears the denouement, but acts mainly as punctuation, not the punch line so it is not lazy humor. I would not be surprised if you almost did not notice it since the protagonist does not truly join the party until the denouement when her body also becomes part of the joke and plot. I am going to go ahead and cosign that final battle scene because it was unexpected though in retrospect, I should have seen it coming. The movie did hint at it.
I highly recommend Extra Ordinary. While it is more comedy than horror, it does such a superb job of twisting tropes into something more realistic and relatable than anything that existed before that I am willing to overlook its flaws.
