★★½
“Teenage angst with a body-count.”
Ella (Daly) is a shy college student, whose psychology lecturer gives the class an unusual project: break a sexual norm. Unfortunately, Ella is rather confused about the intersection between sex and violence, in part because of genetics, for her father was a serial killer, before abandoning her pregnant mother (Heinrich). As a result, Ella’s attempt to carry out the assignment by auditioning at a strip-club, ends with her slitting the throat of the owner (Ron Jeremy, being appropriately grubby). This awakens the serial killer dormant inside her, and she starts taking out the sleazy men around her. The problem is nice guy Daniel (Andres), whose unwillingness to match her stereotypical opinions of masculinity, triggers further conflicting feelings in Ella, as her acts of murder become increasingly more blatant.
A lack of subtlety is also a problem when it comes to the film’s social commentary, though some credit is due for being a couple of years ahead of the #MeToo movement. Still, the almost constant use of voice-over as a narrative tool is lazily problematic, even if you can get past the ludicrous nature of the plot, or that Michael Madsen plays the least convincing college professor in movie history [Malcolm McDowell fares better as Ella’s creepy next-door neighbour]. The most interesting thing is perhaps the heroine’s relationship with her mother, which plays a little like a suburban version of Carrie, without the religious angle to the over-protective mom. I’d like to have seen this explored further.
Daly’s performance isn’t bad, having to cover a lot of emotional range from naively innocent to stone-cold killer, while also portraying the confusion of transforming from a girl into a woman. It’s a role that would challenge any actress, and hardly a surprise that Daly can’t quite convince across all the necessary aspects. She does fare better than the men in the script, who are given almost nothing to work with beyond “be creepy.” Perhaps this is intended as a sly commentary on the shallow depiction of female victims in many horror films? Let’s charitably assume that is indeed the case, though this could equally well just be more lazy writing.
For it is the script which hampers the film most of all, with almost every development triggering a roll of my eyes. What college professor would really hand out such an assignment? What cop would just let a confessed killer go, without any interrogation or further investigation, simply because a similar murder took place? What mother would affect little more than mild concern – especially, knowing her familial history- when her daughter comes home from a date, covered in blood? By coincidence, the day after seeing this, we re-watched American Psycho, a film which is clearly a significant influence on Oliver, in more than just its title (especially the original one, which omitted the word “Lady”). Its superiority is equally undeniable: he’d have benefited by learning a bit more from the source, especially in the area of writing.
Dir: Nathan Oliver
Star: Kate Daly, Dennis Andres, Meredith Heinrich, Josh Dolphin