After her mother’s attempted suicide, dancer Meg Tilly returns to her small hometown with her doctor boyfriend (Tim Matheson) in tow. It doesn’t take long for them to discover that something is seriously wrong with the townsfolk. It seems they are suffering from a severe impulse control problem, which leads to public fornication, extreme cases of road rage, and eventually, murder.
Impulse is a simple, tense, and taut variation on George Romero’s The Crazies, and to a lesser extent, David Cronenberg’s They Came from Within. There is also a little touch of various Stephen King books in there as well as the idea of a small town slowly becoming unglued was a common theme in his work. Even though the film utilizes elements from those masters of horror, it still finds a way to be unique and most importantly, effective. In fact, it might work even better now than it did at the time of its original release thanks to COVID. (There’s also a scene where a cop mows down a kid in cold blood, and the citizens are more outraged at the destruction of their property than his death that certainly registers harder now than when it was made.)
Director Graham (The Final Conflict) Baker delivers a number of unnerving scenes that are usually punctuated with unexpected violence, mutilation, or just plain weirdness. While Baker uses restraint for a lot of these sequences, the way he stages the set-ups and the payoffs work rather well.
Baker’s direction, coupled with the fine performances make Impulse well-worth checking out. The two leads are ideally cast. Tilly is excellent as the waifish city girl returning home to her roots and Matheson is equally great as her boyfriend who may or may not have a touch of the sickness himself. The always great Bill Paxton also pops up in the smallish role of Tilly’s brother, and it’s especially fun to see a folksy nice guy like Hume Cronyn succumbing to the madness.
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