Tag: 2022

Hope

  By

★★
“Hope isn’t necessarily good.”

Hope (Larkin-Coyle) is an aspiring vlogger, though has not yet figured out how to make it pay sufficiently to quit her grindingly dull day job, for a boss who perpetually questions Hope’s commitment. She’s not wrong, because Hope’s heart definitely lives in the outdoors, not at a desk or in a Zoom meeting. Her particular niche of content creation is in wilderness adventures, whether that’s going up mountains, diving underwater or – as in this case – scaling a cliff-face. She then posts the videos online, so that others can live vicariously through her experience. She’s excited for her next trip, which will take her back to a part of Ireland by the ocean, which was a favourite haunt of her late mother.

However, a moment’s inattention leads to disaster, with Hope sent plummeting to the rocks below. When she regains consciousness, she finds her shin bone shattered and sticking out of her leg. With (inevitably!) no cell signal, she is thrown back on her own resources, and will have to make her way out of an increasingly precarious situation, entirely by herself. As you can imagine from this synopsis, it puts a lot of weight on the shoulders of the lead actress, and it’s all a little contrived. Initially, I expected there to be much more of her speaking to the camera, documenting events for her online followers. But the film doesn’t really go that way, favoring a more general voicing of Hope’s inner monologue.

In the main, to be blunt, you are basically watching a woman crawl across rocks for an hour, and I’m probably stating the obvious when I say that this is of limited appeal. There are some inconsistencies which seemed annoying at the time, almost as if whole scenes had been removed. One second, Hope is on a beach. The next, she’s swimming in the water – broken leg and all. Then she’s suddenly marooned in a cave. There’s also character stupidity, such as Hope’s ignorance or wilful disregard for basic survival protocols. However, there’s a third-act twist which, to be fair, goes a long way to explaining what had gone before. On the other hand, you’re left wondering if perhaps the film-makers have sabotaged the entire point with it.

A more definite problem is the sense that there simply is not enough happening here. The fall, presumably for budgetary reasons, is a simple fade to black accompanied by a scream. I will say, the sounds Coyle makes when exploring her wound are legitimately harrowing, and help sell her injury as much as the small but effective effects work on her leg. That takes care of about five minutes, leaving… 93 others, which fall well short of possessing the same degree of intensity. It feels as if the makers were looking to paint a psychological portrait, using the frame of a wilderness survival story. As someone who was expecting a genuine wilderness survival story, I’m left feeling distinctly short-changed, and a little bit cheated.

Dir: Bobby Marno
Star: Sadhbh Larkin Coyle

Vengeance Turns

  By

★★
“Turnabout’s fair play.”

The film opens with a caption, “The first feature film from Robert Christopher Smith,” and it’s largely superfluous. Because, to be brutally honest, you can tell. It’s filled with choices which virtually scream, movie-making debut. That it’s a passion project for Smith is clear, and the persistence with which he pursued his vision is clear, and highly laudable. Perseverance can only take you so far, however, and is no substitute for skill and experience. It does feels this was a learning experience on the fly, with a palpable improvement over its course, and Smith left the production a significantly better film-maker than he came in, I suspect. At least it does tell a fairly complete story (glares over at Gold Raiders).

We first meet heroine Rebecca Falcon (Luelmo), arguing with other locals outside the town store in the 1876 Western town where she lives with her husband and two children. The topic is the local Kumeyaay tribe, whom most regard as savages, and blame for a series of recent violent incidents. Rebecca disagrees: for her it’s personal, since she’s one-quarter Kumeyaay herself, though few know it. Her home is the next invaded – not by the natives – with Rebecca left for dead, and her family brutally slaughtered. She is rescued by Simon (Vecchio), who is actually the son of the group’s leader Jefferson Coletrain (Gardner). Nursed back to health by the real Kumeyaay, Rebecca vows to take vengeance on Jefferson and his gang.

This was split into two parts for release, but is very much one film. and at two hours forty minutes in total… Yeah, it’s definitely overlong, especially in the first half. While relatively quick to get to the reason for revenge, proceedings then grind to a complete halt while she’s recuperating with the Kumeyaay. You’re left hanging out with characters sporting names like “Delicate Poison” (Jaffer) and – I wrote this down – “Ghost with Silent Knives Protects”. The former is played by a Pakistani-Norwegian actress with a clipped British accent. The weird thing is, Jaffer seems a good performer, just wholly inappropriate for this role, to the point I genuinely felt embarrassed for her.

If you have the mental stamina to reach Volume Two, things do improve. Rebecca’s vengeance proves somewhat unfocused initially, though like other threads e.g. her being part-Kumeyaay, nothing much comes of this. It’s clear she is basically deranged, though this is depicted mostly in Luelmo speaking… slowly… and… slurrrrrring her words. Still, things actually happen, and the arrival of batshit crazy Chinese cannibal lady Gloria (Catherine Bo-Eun Song) adds entertainment value. There are technical issues, not least with the audio: one scene on horseback is almost inaudible, between the hooves and the wind. However, there are also scenes that work, such as the brutal interrogation of a prisoner by Gloria and Delicate Poison, or our heroine’s confrontation with an old “friend”. Copious room for improvement, to be sure, yet not without merit. Everyone has to start somewhere.

Dir: Robert Christopher Smith
Star: Paola Luelmo, Azeem Vecchio, Jamald Gardner, Kelsey Jaffer

High Heat

  By

★★★½
“Now we’re cooking.”

Reading other reviews, this seems like an exercise in managing expectations. It is, very much, a tongue-in-cheek entry in the action genre. If you’re expecting something serious or even marginally realistic, I can certainly see how you’d be disappointed. But as a dry satire, I found it worked more often not. It takes place on Opening Night at the Etoile Rouge restaurant, where Ana (Kurylenko) is beavering away as head chef in the kitchen, while husband Ray (Johnson) glad hands things in the front of house. Except, both have a secret. Ray’s is that he ran up over a million dollars in gambling debts to Dom (WWE star Page). His creditor now intends to burn down the restaurant and make Ray collect the insurance. 

Ana is not willing to stand by and watch her life’s work go up in smoke, which is where her secret comes in. For she is a former KGB agent, and is more than capable of taking out the low-level goons Dom initially sends in. That forces the gangster to up his game, and hire some bigger guns (literally, even if the mercs demand a catered lunch should the job takes more than four hours). However, Ana has resources she can call on as well, in the shape of former fellow spy Mimi (Doubleday). Though Mimi may not be entirely pleased to get the call from Ana, given the way they previously parted company. Their unfinished business also needs to be resolved. 

Initially, it’s hard to tell this is parody, but it plays not dissimilar to Cat Run. I had my suspicions from the facile way Ray accepts his wife was a Soviet asset. But the comedic aspects really kick in with the arrival of Mimi, her sniper husband and their daughters who feel like teenage versions of the twins from The Shining. They’re as intent on working through their relationship issues – mostly through bickering – as much as helping Ana. The rest of the supporting cast are along the same lines. Larger than life caricatures, yet ones that are amusing to encounter, such as Gary the masseuse, who would rather be anywhere else than storming a restaurant occupied by a pissed-off chef.

Kurylenko still carries herself very well, both looking the part and cracking heads with some style. It’s mostly firearm action until the end, when there’s an extended brawl that offers a decent payoff. Not all of the humour works: Mimi and her husband are a distinctly mixed bag. The structure is also kinda sloppy. Initially, Dom is set up to be the big bad; by the end, he has become almost an afterthought. Yet it’s still a breezy bit of fun. I could have sworn I’d written about this before: however, I’m damned if I can find my review. I’d definitely heard of it, and can’t figure out why it slipped through the net. Although it may have taken two years, I’m glad to have finally caught up with it.

Dir: Zach Golden
Star: Olga Kurylenko, Don Johnson, Dallas Page, Kaitlin Doubleday

The Bag Girls 2

  By

★★½
“Not so bag.”

Back when I reviewed The Bag Girls, I was not particularly impressed and spent a fair bit of time riffing off the lead actresses’s names, which says a lot about how forgettable the film was. I expected more of the same here, but especially toward the end, there was some indication of genuine progress. While we’re still not talking great, there were positives, which deserve to be acknowledged. You likely do need to have seen the original, as this assumes you know who the characters are: Dee (The Doll) , Nola (The Boss) and the rest of the quartet are still robbing for a living, sporting bejewelled masks, and referring to each other by high-end handbag names. However, trouble hits when a strong-box they loot turns out to belong to Colombian cartel queen, Solera Castillo (Garcia), who is not happy with this apparent disrespect. Meanwhile, the authorities, particularly in the form of Detective Lewis (Wilson), are also on the trail of the Bag Girls.

It’s a reasonable enough plot, and when the film sticks to this, it’s quite watchable. Women take the lead on the three corners of the story-line’s triangle, anchored by decent performances from those involved. It all ends up in the Bag Girls taking the fight to Castillo’s mansion, after she has begun extracting her own vengeance, while Lewis awaits the arrival of backup. I can’t complain about the imagery of Solera, rising out of her hot-tub to spray automatic gunfire at her attackers, wearing an expression Harley Quinn would likely deem excessively enthusiastic. Though she and the Bag Girls really need to focus on their accuracy, possessing skills that would get them kicked out of Imperial Stormtrooper school. However, the film’s reliance on digital muzzle flashes and CGI blood (if at all), resulting in no property damage is disappointing, though likely inevitable given the budget here still is on the low end.

The problem is the film takes way too long to get to the good stuff, diverting en route to far less interesting subplots and side-stories. There’s an entire separate robbery of some rapper’s party, that is neither necessary to the plot, nor staged in ways that are even slightly interesting. I must also say, the music in large part feels remarkably bland; while I’ve criticized this kind of film before for an excessive reliance on obvious music, this does need something with a harder edge to fit the tone. I do also suspect that, if the events at the end unfolded in real life, a Latin drug cartel would be unlikely to allow the perpetrators to skip away to enjoy drinks on a Mexican beach. Maybe I’ve just seen too many episodes of Ozark. Though this is not about “real life” in the slightest, more a glammed-up version of the gangster lifestyle. If still lacking the resources to sell that dream, everyone involved seems to have made progress from last time, and if not eagerly anticipating Bag Girls 3, I’m not dreading it.

Dir: Wil Lewis
Star: Crystal The Doll, LA Love The Boss, Jenicia Garcia, Chevonne Wilson

She season two

  By

★★★½
“Joining our story in progress…”

“Where’s season one?” you may be wondering. It’s a fair question: I thought I had reviewed it here, but there’s absolutely no sign of it on the site. Perhaps that one didn’t meet the necessary action quota? It is true that the first time the heroine shoots someone is the opening episode of the second part, and it thoroughly messes her up. Anyway, we’re here now. Said heroine is Indian policewoman Bhumika Pardeshi (Pohankar), who has been part of an operation to try and nail major narcotics dealer Nayak (Kumar). This involves her going undercover as a prostitute, in order to get into his circle and act as an informant there – obviously, this is a highly hazardous position for her. There’s a whole domestic situation to handle as well.

The first series was mostly about her relationship with one of Nayak’s lieutenants. In the second, she returns to the streets, with Nayak himself as the target. This alone also exposes Bhumika to danger, though she proves more than capable of taking care of herself against violent pimps. Indeed, this proves significant in the second half, after Nayak has supposedly been killed in a police operation. The truth is, he’s still operating, with Bhumika now his second-in-command, using the hookers to move drugs for him. Has she genuinely fallen for the crime boss? Or is this simply Bhumika embedding herself deeper, so his entire network can eventually be brought down?

This question is one which is at the core of the second series. How undercover is she, and how much is the experience going to change her as a result? By the end, the answer to the second part is clear. “A great deal”, to the point where Bhumika may not be able to resume her former life, either as a cop, or as a family woman. There’s a speech where she explains her feelings to Nayak, and how he gives her both love and respect, something she’d never received from a man before. It is thoroughly convincing, and gels with Bhumika not perhaps being “conventionally beautiful,” though she more than makes up for that in an intense and fiery charisma.

I suspect it probably counts as fairly raunchy by Bollywood standards, though this element would likely be PG-13 rated in the West. But it still doesn’t pull its punches, in its depiction of a society that is an enigmatic mix of old and new attitudes, both embracing and resisting change. I think I preferred this slightly more the first season, although without a grade to check, I can’t be certain! It feels like there is less emphasis on the domestic elements – the walking cliche who was Bhumika’s abusive and estranged husband, is barely there if at all. There’s definite scope for a third series, potentially pitting Bhumika directly against her commanding officer, Jason Fernandez (Kini). But before that, do I now need to go back and re-view season one? Stay tuned…

Creator: Imtiaz Ali
Star: Aaditi Pohankar, Kishore Kumar G, Vishwas Kini, Resh Limba

Peggy

  By

★½
“Amateur hour and ten minutes.”

An early contender for widest gap between synopsis and reality in 2024. On the one hand, we have “After years of torment, Peggy finally gets revenge on all those who wronged her in the past.” On the other? A dumb, microbudget not-a-horror, not anything really. It’s probably most notable for the unexpected appearance of Tom Lehrer on the soundtrack. I guess the basic concept is there. Peggy (Van Dorn) is almost thirty, but still lives at home with her doting dad (Williams). Her main hobby is abducting and torturing those who “wronged her” – though quite what they did to deserve such punishment is never made clear, which makes it kinda hard to feel empathy for her.

Possibly even more irritating are… well, everyone else, to be honest, but I suspect the local cops are top of the list. Even when Peggy carries out a mass poisoning at the bar where she works, when a customer makes an off-colour remark (have the makers ever been in a bar?), they do basically nothing. Mind you, Dustin (Guiles) is picking up evidence at a murder scene with his bare hands, so there’s that. The victims, including former high school Queen Bee Rachel (Osoki), are slightly noxious. But again: nothing to merit death, unless you consider dropping the C-bomb a capital crime, as Rachel does on a couple of occasions. [If so, I’m in trouble: being Scottish, it’s locked in to my sweary vocabulary].

There’s no particular sense of escalation, development or anything much. Spoiler, I guess, but it ends with Peggy simply announcing she has decided to go on a road-trip. The end. Well, if you discount ten minutes of the world’s slowest end-credits, which live up to the term “title crawl”, despite including an alternate ending that adds nothing of note or interest to proceedings. Including this, it still barely reaches an hour and ten. But, you know what? I’m not even mad about it. Indeed, half a star is probably for the film appreciating the line from Hamlet: “Brevity is the soul of wit.” Though given the lack of wit here, the saying needs to be reworked as, brevity is the soul of brevity. 

Performances range from the acceptable (Van Dorn) to the “actor no-showed, but there’s a homeless guy hanging around outside the 7-11” level. There aren’t even any decent exploitation elements which might have provoked some interest, with no nudity and gore limited to the occasional squirt of red-tinged corn syrup. To be fair, I get that making movies is hard. Making good ones is more difficult still. Yet when I sacrifice part of my hard-earned day off to this low-grade nonsense, I feel I have earned the right to be moderately aggrieved by the waste of my time. I never did figure out about the “years of torment” allegedly suffered by Peggy. I sincerely doubt it was significantly worse than the hour of torment this inflicted on me.

Dir: Brandon Guiles
Star: Tiffani Van Dorn, Brandon Guiles, Brian Williams, Katie Ososki

Good Morning, Verônica: season two and three

  By

★★★
“Good afternoon and good night.”

I’ll treat these two seasons as one entity. Indeed, there’s a case to be made that you could include the first season as well, given the way they are inter-connected. However, it feels that the second and third are more directly linked. If you recall, the initial series had Sao Paolo cop Verônica Torres (Müller) looking into a domestic abuse case. However, this turns out not be as simple as it appears, with the abuser being protected by a mafia-like group, whose tentacles are embedded in a selection of power structures, including the police force. Series #2 and #3 take a broader scope, Verônica looking to take down elements of the group, and end their systemic abuse of women.

The second series focuses on Verônica’s efforts against a church run by sketchy and abusive faith healer Matias (Gianecchini). He has a line in inviting poor hurt souls – albeit only attractive, young women – to stay on the church’s property, where bad stuff happens to them. His wife is firmly beneath Matias’s thumb, and Verônica is now operating more less unofficially, though with tacit help from some on the force. Her only hope is to get to the daughter, Angela (Castanho), who is lesbian because Netflix. If she can convince Angela her father is not the saint his public persona appears to be, they might have a chance to expose his crimes. But doing so simply removes another layer of the conspiracy, with the shadowy “Doúm” remaining at large.

Which is where the third series comes in, as she finds Doúm to be horse breeder Jeronimo (Santoro). Initially, he seems on her side, which is remarkably naive of her, because he set my alarm bells ringing from the very start. Doesn’t help that he looks like a creepy combination of Liam Neeson, Kid Rock and Tommy Wiseau. And that’s before we learn about the questionable relationship with his mother, or that he grew up in the same abusive orphanage as Marias. Such concerns are very justified, because it turns out Jeronimo is not just breeding horses for fun and profit. He has his eye on both Angela and Verônica’s daughter, as the next brood mares, ready to be auctioned off to rich clients.

I felt it all got a little silly and excessive in the third season, with the plot requiring events which stretched plausibility to a breaking point. It’s likely a good thing it was only half the length of the second series, at three episodes rather than six. While it ends with Verônica looking to continue the fight for justice in her extra-legal capacity, the show was canceled, and I feel that’s wise given the steadily diminishing returns. There was a nice sense of circularity, series 3 ending in a suicide, the way the very first episode opened. However, the televisual cycle of abuse was becoming repetitive, although both the second and third seasons had some interesting revelations about Verônica’s family background. While Müller’s performance held things together, it’s likely better this stopped too soon, rather than too late.

Creator: Raphael Montes
Star: Taina Müller, Reynaldo Gianecchini, Klara Castanho, Rodrigo Santoro

Special Delivery

  By

★★½
“Good only in car parts.”

Based on the trailer, I was hoping for something like a Korean version of The Transporter. It seemed to promise this, with Jang Eun-ha (Park) playing a courier for Baekgang Industries, a company who will transport things – mostly people, it appears – from Point A to Point B, when regular delivery methods are not possible. For example, because the passenger in question is being chased by enemies, and needs to make a quick exit from the country before he’s found. Her latest mission involves baseball pitcher Kim Doo-shik, who has blown the whistle on a match-fixing scandal, so needs to escape before those behind it get hold of him and young son Kim Seo-won (Jung).

So far, so sprightly, especially after an enthralling early sequence which showcases Eun-ha’s mad driving skills in avoiding pursuers through the narrow streets of Busan. However, the attempted pick-up of Kim Sr. goes badly awry, as he’s being chased by Jo Kyung-pil (Song). Jo is a corrupt cop who is also behind the gambling ring involved in the match-fixing. Eun-ha ends up in possession of Seo-won, and… Hang on, didn’t we write about three different versions of this story in October 2022? Yeah, for much of the rest of the film is basically another take on Gloria. Brash, beer-drinking Eun-ha is lumbered with a kid whom she cannot initially stand, yet inevitably, comes to care for Seo-won over the remaining course of the film.

Now, this isn’t all that different from The Transporter, where Jason Statham was also lumbered with an unwanted human package, in his case Shu Qi. However, there, it was the jumping off point for some cool and generally entertaining action, e.g. the classic garage fight, involving a well-oiled Statham. Here, not nearly so much, even though Jo is keen to get hold of the kid, who has a computer dongle which is key to the recovery of $30 million. While this could have been the source of multiple exciting car-chases – and as the opening shows, technically, the makers were more than capable – it feels as if director Park is more interested in how suddenly enforced maternal responsibility changes his heroine. I can’t say I’m with him there.

The concept can work, but seems incredibly trite here, and doesn’t help matters that Seo-won is a very generic child, with little personality compared, say, to Newt in Aliens, or Mathilda in The Professional. Consequently, Eun-ha’s decision not to drop the child off at the nearest police-station seems contrived for plot purposes, rather than resulting from a natural release of suppressed nurturing emotions. It’s well-enough assembled that it never becomes unwatchable, yet proceedings remain just that: assembled. It’s not without merit, since both protagonist and antagonist make for interesting characters. But it the end, Chris described it as “cute,” and that’s borderline damning with faint praise in her vocabulary – one step above “interesting.” I can’t honestly say she was wrong in her assessment.

Dir: Park Dae-min
Star: Park So-dam, Song Sae-byeok, Kim Eui-sung, Jung Hyeon-jun

Giantess Battle Attack

  By

★★★
“…the harder they fall.”

I was expecting this to be a follow-up to the previous Giantess films, most recently Giantess Attack vs. Mecha-Fembot! But it isn’t. This is instead, a sequel to Attack of the 50 Foot CamGirl, which I haven’t seen. However, I doubt it matters. This is much the same mix of titillation, tongue-in-cheek comedy and B-movie campiness. I think it’s safe to say, if you liked the earlier movies (and, personally, I was amused more than their quality probably deserves), this will likely hit the right spot. Director Wynorski has been doing this kind of thing for over forty years, and has no illusions about it. He has a cameo in this, complaining about the gratuitous nudity, which ends with him being pied off. And why not?

Following the events of CamGirl (I guess, anyway), the gigantic Beverly Wood (Smith) is now working in a quarry. She is trying to pay off all the damage she caused in the first film, with the help of loving boyfriend and quarry foreman Mike (Gross). A chance to escape her debts comes in the form of a $50 million PPV catfight against Anna Conda (Max), who is going to be supersized for the battle. But Beverly wants to go the other way and return to normal dimensions. Meanwhile, an extra-terrestrial threat looms, in the shape of Spa-Zor (Hall) from the planet Buxomus. She saw footage of Bev’s rampage, and travels to Earth to find an opponent who can match her size and skills.

There is, apparently, a whole giantess fetish thing. It’s not something I’m into. However, I was still amused enough over the brief (sixty minute) running time. It’s clearly not intended to be taken seriously, from the opening scene on Buxomus featuring a very terrestrial doorbell sound, and lines lifted shamelessly from Star Trek. That sets the lighthearted tone, and the film does a decent job of sustaining it thereafter. Even the obligatory sexual content is an improvement on Mecha-Fembot, played in a way closer to a fifties nudie-cutie than contemporary smut. It feels as if the cast and crew are all on the same page, pulling together, and for me, this helps paper over the obviously limited resources.

Naturally, it ends in a three-way fight, pitting Beverly and Anna against Spa-Zor at an oil refinery, which comes over like a fever dream version of a Godzilla finale. This is never going to be mistaking for high art or great cinema, and it’s certainly not for everyone. I wouldn’t argue if you said it was terrible – and, I suspect, neither would Wynorski. However, hand on heart, I was more entertained by this than The Marvels, which felt like a soulless commercial item, created purely for profit. While I’m under no illusions – a goal here was to make money – it feels like that was not its only purpose. I’d argue this is therefore closer to being true art. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off for a nice lie-down in a dark room. 

Dir: Jim Wynorski
Star: Ivy Smith, Brian Gross, Masuimi Max, Kiersten Hall

Hunt Her, Kill Her

  By

★★★
“Tabling the argument.”

This is fairly sparse, unfolding entirely in the single location of a furniture factory, over the course of a single night. The central character is Karen (Terrazzino), a single mother who has just taken on the job of a cleaner and overnight security guard at the premises, in order to provide for her young daughter, who is ill on the night Karen has to start work. These issues quickly pale into insignificance – though not irrelevance – when a group of masked men enter the building, looking to hunt down and kill her. With the doors chained from the outside and the phone lines cut, Karen is entirely on her own against the bigger and stronger, but fortunately not smarter, intruders.

That’s basically it, and this is definitely not one if you’re looking for complex themes or nuanced characters. It’s straightforward survival horror, with the first half closer to stalk ‘n’ slash territory, consisting mostly of Karen being chased around the labyrinthine building, hiding out and being discovered. Things do become more action-oriented the deeper we get into things. There is a certain element of fortune in the ways she defeats some of her opponents, although this is probably necessary given the size disparity, and there’s a chaotic messiness to them which is effective. The one which stands out is the death by toilet plunger (no, the other end), which is drawn out to the point where it becomes almost blackly humourous.

That said, I did still roll my eyes at some elements, most obviously when Karen disguises herself as one of the predators. It’s an unnecessary push of believability, which would have been best forgotten. On the other hand, it is nice that the damage isn’t all one way. By the time Karen gets down to the final assailant (Oakley), she’s certainly far from uninjured, and this only escalates during their battle. If you likely will not be surprised in the slightest by the identity of the last man standing, it brings a deeply personal edge to the fight, and in addition, certainly gives Karen additional motivation. The result is considerably more of a brawl than anything, neither party giving or receiving quarter, and using whatever is nearby to their advantage.

The scripting here is so bare-bones as to be positively anorexic. For example, the backstory for Karen is put over in a way which you could either call “tersely efficient” or “laughably negligible,” depending on how charitable you might be feeling. While I lean somewhat towards the former, I’d prefer it to have done so in order to get to the meat of the matter faster, in lieu of the extended game of Hide ‘n’ Seek which occupies the first half. However, the film makes good use of its setting, and once things kick off, there’s precious little slack there either. Terrazzino gives a better physical performance than a dramatic one, but given the circumstances, that’s probably the way you want it to skew.

Dir: Greg Swinson and Ryan Thiessen
Star: Natalie Terrazzino, JC Oakley III, Trevor Tucker, Hunter Tinney