Party Monster

In this film, Macaulay Culkin plays 1990s “Clubland” celebrity (and murderer) Michael Alig, a squalid character who fancied himself famous because he made noise in a noisy corner of New York. Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato, who wrote and directed (from the book Disco Bloodbath by Alig’s pal James St. James), think the way to make a movie about shallow, aimless lives descending into chaos is for the movie itself to be shallow, aimless and descending into chaos. Culkin’s stilted non-performance is the hole in the middle of this doughnut—he’s outlived his cuteness and can’t deliver a line without sounding like he memorized it; he resorts to queenie-weenie playacting. As St. James, Seth Green does better (he’s a better actor), but he has little to do but talk to the camera, griping that the movie’s not about him.