★★★
“Gothic Grand Guignol”
For the first, perhaps, three-quarters, this feels almost more like a Lifetime Original Movie. Then, at the end… Hoo-boy. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, shall we? It begins with Nina (Orlan), seeking to escape a fraught life in Russia, for her and her young daughter, Dasha (Pimenova). Through an online dating service, she meets Karl Frederick (Bernsen), and they eventually move to America to be with him. While he’s an older gentleman, initially they seem to have struck it lucky, for he’s a rich, retired surgeon, who owns a massive estate in the country. In fact, you could say it seems almost too good to be true…
Which, of course, it is, despite the rapid marriage which follows. Even if you’re not aware of Bernsen’s long, distinguished career of playing psychos of various flavours (going back at least to The Dentist in 1996), the warning signs quickly pile up. The antagonistic housekeeper. Karl’s coke habit. The forbidden wing of the house. Apparently spooky occurrences. The random attack dog. A precarious, highly-pointy chandelier hanging in the hallway. The previous wife and child Karl “forgot” to mention. Though these all pale in comparison to the sight of Bernsen’s buttocks, and are before we get to his attempt outright to dispose of Nina in a riding accident. It’s clear he is rather more interested in Dasha than her mother. The only questions remaining are, to what purpose, and what is Nina going to do about it, to protect her daughter and herself.
The latter question is of particular relevance here, and is best answered by the picture on the right, depicting Nina in a blood-drenched wedding gown. To call the final act of this berserk would be an understatement. Shotgun blasts to the head and hands. Multiple hammers to the head. And, of course, the much anticipated attack of the highly-pointy chandelier. It’s as if the Lifetime channel production was hijacked by Rob Zombie and Eli Roth for the final week. And possible the maddest element of all? It’s triggered after the heroine falls face-first into Karl’s stash of Colombian marching powder, in echoes of the peyote-driven rampage we enjoyed in Revenge.
Ojeda is no stranger to this site, having previously given us Savaged. If you’ve seen it, then the latter part of the film makes considerably more sense – if anything, it’s the earlier going which is more out of character to that. However, it’s also the biggest weakness; as detailed above, the script is seriously guilty of overloading the film with Ominous Goings-On [capitals used deliberately], to the point any half-responsible mother would be “Peace, out”, and taking her child on the first plane back to Russia. There are times when less is more, and the first three-quarters of the film demonstrate this. However, there are also times when more is more. And, boy, the last quarter are an example of that, just as much.
Dir: Michael S. Ojeda
Star: Oksana Orlan, Corbin Bernsen, Kristina Pimenova, Lisa Goodman