Tag: USA

Kimi

  By

★★★
“Blue is the warmest colour”

Angela Childs (Kravitz) is a computer programmer who fixes bugs on the new smart speaker “Kimi”. It’s a perfect job, as she suffers from agoraphobia but can work at home, interrupted only by occasional sex with friendly neighbour (Bowers). When she finds a recording she thinks is a sexual assault on a woman, she contacts her superiors, who don’t seem eager to contact the FBI. Angela experienced an assault in the past herself (causing her agoraphobia), and goes directly to an executive at the central office, Natalie Chowdhury (Wilson). What she does not know is, that her company is about to go public and the woman she heard, the lover of its CEO, is already dead. Not only are the authorities uninformed, her own company has sent hired killers on her trail, with state-of-the-art tech to locate Angela. She must leave her home, agoraphobia or not.

This movie got my initial attention when I saw the poster with a blue-haired Zoë Kravitz and the word “Kimi” over it – I originally thought that would be the name of her character. I don’t know if this movie was actually shown in cinema in the US (Jim: no, it went straight to streaming), here in Germany it ran in a few cinemas for about 2 weeks. In America it can be seen on HBO Max; here in Germany it is available on Amazon-Prime. This is good as there is – unlike the US – no German DVD release. I worried this would be another one of those “woke” movies: it’s not. Written by first-class screenwriter David Koepp (Jurassic Park, Mission Impossible“, Spider-Man (2002), Indiana Jones 4) and directed by Steven Soderbergh, this movie proves to be very effective.

We see Kravitz living quite comfortably in her large flat and though she can only see her mother online and isn’t able to go downstairs to meet her friend for some fast-food in front of the door, she isn’t missing much. She more or less has everything she needs at home. In that respect the movie perfectly mirrors the situation many of us around the globe experienced during the lockdowns, when we were asked to work from home if we could. Let’s face it, quite a lot of people got used to this kind of situation, and companies could save a lot of money, not needing to have their employees actually in a dedicated working place.

Kimi indirectly discusses this attitude, but also seems to make a clear point that there is a need to leave your own four walls sometimes, because not everything can be handled from your laptop. That said, it’s quite disturbing how much can be done by digital tracking, and this results in a real “woman hunt” through the city, with Angela’s chances rising when she gets rid of her mobile phone. The world outside is frightening through her eyes: some people are out but it’s not too crowded until she gets into a demonstration. Most shocking is the way she is almost kidnapped there by the assassins, in broad daylight. I’d also like to mention the unusual but good and very interesting score by Cliff Martinez, such as when she escapes from the central office.

It is not until about an hour that Kravitz leaves her apartment. But ultimately her journey leads back home: in the end no one can help, not even a friendly stalker from across the street – only herself. The movie has been from time to time mentioned in comparison with Hitchcock’s Rear Window which I think is a bit too high praise. Other movies such as Blow Out (1981) by Brian de Palma, Enemy of the State (1998) with Will Smith and Gene Hackman, or the recent Netflix thriller The Woman in the Window (2021) with Amy Adams come to mind. The last one especially shares the basic situation of the protagonist with this, though Window is much less successful. Kimi is also part of a long line of what could be called “digital surveillance thrillers”.

David Koepp himself once wrote a similar movie: Panic Room (2002) in which Jodie Foster had to defend herself and her daughter from that location against burglars. But while in Panic Room the main idea was to escape and get help, here there is no more security outside. The authorities can’t (or don’t want to) help, and your employer or company have turned against you. It’s a subject Soderbergh has previously covered in Haywire or Unsane. So, while Koepp and Soderbergh don’t tell an entirely new story here, they have put it on a contemporary level. This works, giving a new coat of paint to the old thriller genre, that has become a bit stale and isn’t seen so often anymore. Modern Hollywood seems more interested in the newest superhero movie or the latest Tom Cruise blockbuster.

Kravitz gives in my opinion a very good performance. I’ve never been a real fan, though she seems to have had a breakthrough as Catwoman in The Batman (2022), opposite Robert Pattinson. Here, I can’t complain: I was convinced the heroine was both agoraphobic and quite stubborn. The other actors here are largely unknown, yet give good, fitting performances, and it all comes together well. There are some nice audio ideas in the movie; for example when Angela puts on her headphones everything becomes quiet. This is the same thing we do on a daily basis: just try to fade out the real world. Kimi seems to be saying that we maybe shouldn’t do this so often. We should go out and involve ourselves, and take a stand for things we care for. That’s not a bad message, I think.

Dir: Stephen Soderbergh
Star: Zoë Kravitz, Byron Bowers, Rita Wilson, Erika Christensen

Badland Doves

  By

★★
“When doves cry.”

I am contractually obliged to appreciate at least somewhat, any film made here in Arizona. This certainly fits the bill, having been shot at places like the Pioneer Living History Museum, Sitgreaves National Forest and Winters Film Group Studio. However, it is a fairly basic tale of two-pronged revenge, with significant pacing issues. The proceedings only come to life in the last 20 minutes – and barely that. Initially, matters are more than a tad confusing, as we jump about in time and space without apparent notification. But the basic principal is eventually established.

Revenger #1 is Regina Silva (Martin), whose family were killed by masked intruders. Following that, she got shooting lessons from a conveniently passing gunslinger, and set out to find those responsible, working as a saloon prostitute because it was apparently the best way to find them. Yeah. About that… Anyway, Revenger #2 is Victoria Bonham (Penny), who just so happens to be the madam of a brothel, also seeking justice after one of her girls was murdered. Coincidentally, Regina shows up, and they eventually discover they are both looking for the same person, Pete Chalmers (Johnston). However, his father (Greenfield) wields so much power in the town, his son is basically untouchable. Victoria wants to leverage legal means against Pete, while Regina prefers more direct action, and isn’t willing to wait around forever, while the wheels of the law grind slowly away.

If you were to summarize my reactions to this, the first ten minutes would be “What is going on?”. The next twenty would likely be, “Ah, ok. I know where this is heading.” After that, we get about half an hour of, “Is anything else of significance going to happen?”, then twenty of moderate satisfaction, as Chalmers and his forces go to battle with Regina and her allies. However, the action here is underwhelming, not least because it appears the bad guys have all the shooting skills of Star Wars stormtroopers, unable to hit stationary targets from about ten paces, in broad daylight (as shown, top). Pete is an underwhelming villain too: beyond “alcohol’s to blame,” it’s never particularly established why he attacked Regina’s family or killed Victoria’s employee. Motivation: it’s vastly over-rated, apparently.

The last five minutes do offer at least something unexpected, in terms of the mechanism by which revenge is achieved. It’s about the only novel angle the film has to offer, and you sense this is one of those cases where having the same person writing, editing and directing proved problematic. I’m not convinced the story can handle the two-pronged approach, with the script leaving both threads feeling in need of development.The dual female leads aren’t bad, though I was distracted by Penny’s accent, which sounds more Antipodean than Arizona. To be fair, it’s really not any worse than Bad Girls, the far larger budgeted “whores out for revenge” film. However, that is not exactly a high bar to clear. For passion projects like this, I have no problem forgiving budgetary restrictions, and to be fair, this looks and sounds decent. The plodding and meandering script, however, is much harder to see past.

Dir: Paul Winters
Star: Sandy Penny, Jessica Y. Martin, Manny Greenfield, Daniel Johnston
A version of this review originally appeared on my other review site, Film Blitz.

Barbie Spy Squad

  By

★★
“Imagination, life is your creation”

Ah, the things I watch for you people. Safe to say, this probably hit new heights of “I am not the target demographic”, but it’s hard to argue it is outside the remit of the site. To the film’s credit, this is not as bad as I feared it might be. If I had an eight-year-old daughter – such a shame this turned up about 25 years too late! – there would be far worse things to have inflicted on me. Not that I’ll exactly be chasing down any of the other thirty-nine entries in the franchise, mind you. There will be no Barbie & Her Sisters in The Great Puppy Adventure review here. But as lightly amusing, just about tolerable to an adult spy pastiches go… this was lightly amusing and just about tolerable.

Unsurprisingly, the heroine is Barbie (Lindbeck) and her two friends, who are so blandly forgettable I can’t even remember their names. The trip spend all their spare time doing gymnastics, until recruited by Aunt Zoe (Weseluck) to become agents in a covert organization, accessed through a secret door in the HOLLYWOOD sign. They are to put their acrobatic skills to use, catching a cat-burglar who is accumulating gems that will be used in an electromagnetic pulse weapon by the villains. [If you have not figured out the real identity of the cat-burglar inside the first five minutes, I am concerned for you.] There will be training missions! Adorable robo-sidekicks! Many, many gadgets! Valuable life lessons!

In other words, this is absolutely what you would expect: entirely safe, wholesome entertainment for those to whom Barbie is an aspirational role-model (albeit one radically toned down in physique from the original’s 36-18-33 figure). It plays mostly like a G-rated version of Charlie’s Angels, with the trio getting into and out of scrapes, while exchanging witty banter. There are moments where it appears to teeter on the edge of genuine satire, such as Aunt Zoe sternly warning the trio that this is a covert mission… while they roar through the city streets on their lurid trio of super-powered motorcycles. However, I’m not convinced this was intentional, with most of this apparently taking itself seriously. Well, as seriously as a movie about secret agent Barbie ever could be.

The sheer predictability of this does become grinding, to the extent you barely need to watch this to follow the plot. The morality on view is rarely subtle, though there are certainly worse concepts to promote than believing in yourself and supporting your friends. The animation is mid-tier: there’s not much in the way of facial expression here, though since this is replicating plastic dolls, I guess that makes sense. However, the action is reasonably well-done, even if I did find myself thinking a live-action version would have been preferable. On the other hand, I saw the live-action Kim Possible movie, which started from a much stronger foundation, yet still came up well short. Best leave Barbie in the world of imagination, I suspect.

Dir: Michael Goguen, Conrad Helten
Star (voice): Erica Lindbeck, Stephanie Sheh, Jenny Pellicer, Cathy Weseluck

Shark Huntress

  By

★½
“Eco-garbage.”

I’ve previously talked about – OK, “ranted” may not be inappropriate – the perils of message movies. But I did wonder whether it was the specific content to which I objected. Would I dislike a film so much, if I was on board with its strident message? On the evidence here, I can confidently state: hell, yes. For this is painfully earnest and hard to watch, much though I agree with the environmental topic, that humanity’s use of plastics are threatening the oceans. An alternative needs to be found. By which I mean, I strongly suggest you find an alternative to watching this movie. The poster has clearly strayed in from a far more entertaining offering, and bears little resemblance to what this provides. 

The heroine is Sheila (Grey), who heads out to a Pacific island, after the disappearance of her mother. The body turns up, showing marks indicating she was eaten by a great white shark. Which is odd, since they’re not found within a thousand miles of the place. Sheila comes increasingly to believe the attack was not a natural occurrence, but engineered by “the plastic people” in response to her mother’s research, which threatened their business. She wants to kill the shark in question, but also expose the truth behind it, and make those responsible pay for their actions. To that end, she teams up with a group of like-minded ecowarriors, to investigate the company. Naturally, the target isn’t just sitting back and letting their nefarious machinations be exposed. 

There is the germ of an interesting idea here, along the lines of Moby Dick, only for it to be ruthlessly strangled in incompetent execution. Far too much time is spent pounding home the message about waste, which should have been used to develop the plot. There is no real antagonist, just an all but faceless corporation, whose actions make little or no sense. I mean, if you want to get rid of somebody, your plan is flying a shark thousands of miles, letting it go and… hoping it eats the target? Later, they’re quite happy to take someone out by more conventional means. Meanwhile, rather than being any kind of shark huntress, it takes Sheila over 65 minutes before she goes past her ankles, anywhere except a hotel swimming-pool for lessons in Diving 1.0.1.

I didn’t mind Grey, despite English not being her first language: there are occasional moments of effective emoting, such as her mother’s funeral. The photography is occasionally good, though the film desperately needs better colour matching. The problems are… everywhere else, such as a supporting character who literally says things like “thumbs-down emoji”. Or an ending of staggering abruptness, which involves a stabbing with a pen and a conveniently passing shark, while low-key elevator music plays in the background. I must admit, long before we reached that point, I was hoping the shark would bring in some of its mates, and consume everyone involved with this, in one giant feeding frenzy. Spoiler alert: no such luck.

Dir: John Riggins
Star: Katrina Grey, Dean Alexandrou, John Flano, Russell Geoffrey Banks

7 Women From Hell

  By

★★½
“Circling hell”

About the only review online I found for this, said it “may be the worst movie released in 1961.” I can only presume the writer of that statement has never seen The Beast of Yucca Flats. Even if I admit its weaknesses, Seven is nowhere near the same league of badness. Indeed, it starts off well, depicting the sudden invasion of Papua New Guinea by Japanese forces in 1942, with “enemy” civilians being herded into interment camps. The ones on the women’s side are a multi-national bunch, including Australian Grace Ingram (Owens), several Americans including Janet Cook (Craig), a German widow Ann Van Laer (Sylvia Daneel), Frenchwoman Claire Oudry (Darcel), and mixed-race nurse Mai-Lu Ferguson (Pilar Seurat). 

Initially, life is just about tolerable, with the camp commandant being mostly reasonable. But after he is killed in a bombing raid, his sadistic deputy takes over. When one of them knocks out a guard who tried to rape her, the women escape with the help of the camp doctor. But life on the outside is little better, especially with the Japanese in pursuit. Let’s just say, it doesn’t stay at seven women for very long. Without a compass, their odds of finding their way to safety are slim. Fortunately, they come across a downed American airman who has one. The bad news: he tells them their intended destination has already been abandoned. Then they meet the estate of German-Argentinean farmer Luis Hullman (Cesar Romero). Though is he as friendly as he initially appears to be?

It is important to realize this is very much a product of its era, when Hollywood was supremely disinterested in action heroines. We were still several years before even the arrival of Honey West on televisions, and there were few cases at the time where a female-led story-line would not be driven primarily by romance. It’s on that basis that the rating above has to be seen, cutting it some slack for the time in which it was made. By modern standards, sure, it’s fairly weak sauce. But the climax, where the women discover the truth about Luis and take action, feels progressive for the time. These women are – again, for the era – remarkably independent. They don’t need to be rescued by men: indeed, they’re the ones doing the rescuing of the airman.

The weakness is mostly on the character front, as outside of their nationalities, the protagonists are not given anything like an adequate amount of depth. The script doesn’t seem to know what to do with them once they are outside the confines of the prison camp either, at one point resorting to a bathing scene which had me rolling my eyes at the indignity of it all. Credit for not making the Japanese irredeemably villainous, though I’m not convinced the shooting location of Hawaii is an adequate stand-in for Papua New Guinea. Definitely not the worst movie released in 1961, by quite a considerable margin.

Dir: Robert D. Webb
Star: Patricia Owens, Denise Darcel, Margia Dean, Yvonne Craig

The Woman Who Robbed the Stagecoach

  By

★★½
“A tale of daylight robbery.”

There are a couple of points to note going in. This was one of “12 Westerns in 12 months”, a project run by the director during 2020. It also proudly pronounces itself as the first ever Western feature to be shot entirely on an iPhone. Both of these do lead to limitations. The sheer speed involved obvious has an impact, and I can’t help wondering if a more measured approach would have been better for the end product. As for the iPhone… Well, on the plus side it looked perfectly watchable on my 49″ television, especially the outdoor scenes. However, the indoor sequences seemed almost too crisp. Especially for a historical production like this, I felt I was expecting a softer look, and I found that a bit of a distraction throughout.

It’s the story of Pearl Hart, a genuine figure from Arizona history, who achieved notoriety by being involved in one of the last stagecoach robberies, at the very end of the nineteenth century (May 30, 1899, to be precise). The movie covers both her life leading up to that point, and the subsequent arrest, trial, acquittal, re-arrest, conviction, escape, recapture, eventual release – according to some, because she managed to get pregnant in jail – and final disappearance into obscurity. Actually, the script basically feels like they took Pearl’s Wikipedia page, and used that as a synopsis. You can virtually tick off the incidents mentioned in it, as they happen during the film. With the character such a blank slate, and so little verifiable information, I’d like to have seen Mills give us something not taken from the first page of Google results.

The positives are mostly from the performances. Mills pulls double-duty as Hart’s accomplice, “Joe Boot”, about whom next to nothing is known. That does allow some freedom, and Root is made into a European miner, who is largely obsessed with Pearl and prepared to take the fall for the robbery on her behalf. I did like Etchell’s portrayal of Pearl, a woman who has been fighting an uphill battle almost her entire life, and tries to make the best of her situation – often by morally questionable means, albeit out of necessity. The film also shot in a lot of the locations around where events took place, such as in Globe, with the Yuma Territorial Prison standing in for Tucson’s jail.

It’s unfortunate that the limited time and budget are often all too apparent. In particular, there’s next to no scope here, with Mills largely forced to keep the camera in close, to try and disguise the paucity of sets, or things like a lack of extras. It really doesn’t work, although it remains a story that should be told, and I’m glad to have heard it. But the almost throwaway nature of the production, combined with the rote nature of the script, does the larger than life character of Pearl Hart a disservice. They should have chosen to print the legend instead.

Dir: Travis Mills
Star: Lorraine Etchell, Travis Mills, Kevin Goss, Michael Estridge

Hell Hath No Fury

  By

★★★½
“Grave consequences.”

I’m quite familiar with the work of director Jesse Johnson, mostly through his collaborations with Scott Adkins, who is probably the best action star you’ve never heard of. Some of their movies together have been top-tier, in particular Avengement, so I was very curious to see what he’d do with a film which – according to the cover – has a female lead. Well, that is slightly misleading in that the heroine does take a back-seat as far the action goes. But there’s still easily enough to qualify here, and she’s definitely not your typical character in a war-time setting like this.

To be blunt: Marie is a collaborator with the Nazis who occupied France. In particular, she was the mistress of S.S. officer Von Bruckner (Bernhardt), until their relationship goes pear-shaped (to put it mildly), and she’s shipped off to Ravensbruck concentration camp. Three years later, with the Allies sweeping through France, she is released and returns to her home-town. They haven’t forgotten her collaboration, so she has her head shaved and a swastika painted on her forehead. Marie is rescued from further indignity by Major Maitland (Mandylor) after playing her trump card, telling him she knows the location of a cache of gold in a local cemetery. However, on arrival there, it’s quickly clear they’re not the only ones after it. The gravedigger wants in, and Von Bruckner is also on his way back, hoping to collect the stash on his way out of the country.

There’s something quite Sergio Leone about this. The cemetery treasure idea is clearly taken from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, along with the three-way stand-off at the end, and the way Marie tries to play the two sides against each other reminded me of A Fistful of Dollars. This isn’t as stylized, the cinematography is nowhere near as sublime, and it’s largely restricted to the single location of the cemetery. Yet it’s solid enough, and the lack of traditional “good guys” (or girls!) – another similarly to the spaghetti Western genre – is quite refreshing in the context. Everyone here is driven strictly by one imperative: getting the gold for themselves, by any means necessary: no-one is the slightest bit interested in returning it to its rightful owners.

Alliances are formed and dissolved as the Americans, French, Germans and Marie all look to come out on top, though there are nasty surprises for everyone as things unfold, and the Nazi forces arrive on the scene. This leads to an extended gun-battle around the tombstones, and eventually, the stand-off mentioned. I can’t say I felt the ending was entirely satisfying: it didn’t make sense, considering all that had gone before. Giving Marie more to do, rather than simply manipulating her way towards the gold, would have been nice. However, the journey to get there was briskly entertaining, and the freshness of the characters in this particular scenario, also helped sustain my interest with relative ease to the end credits.

Dir: Jesse V. Johnson
Star: Nina Bergman, Louis Mandylor, Daniel Bernhardt, Timothy V. Murphy
a.k.a. Ave Marie

Betsy

  By

★★
“Dog People”

On her way home one night, Betsy (Ryan) is attacked by a mystery assailant and badly injured. While she recovers, she’s traumatized by the events, with nightmares that even her attendance at a support group can’t help. She is also increasingly plagued by violent outbursts against her supportive but increasingly concerned roommate Kayte (Osborne), and physical changes. If you are at all familiar with horror movies, you’ll know the symptoms: Betsy’s attacker was a werewolf, and she’s now in the process of becoming one. This throws a spanner in her growing relationship with Sam (Miller), made worse because he’s a policeman, investigating the recent spate of “animal attack” murders around town.

There’s seems to be a strong inspiration from Paul Schrader’s remake of Cat People here, not least in that it’s sexual activity which seems to bring out the beast in Betsy, rather than the phase of the moon. Her first transformation occurs after a sexual assault, and another after a session of love-making with Sam. It’s never quite clear whether she needs, as in Cat People, to kill in order to regain her human form: there’s no-one here who can tell her the rules by which she is now operating. Indeed, nor is it clear what happened to her original attacker, who seems to infect her, then leaves the film entirely. But this will suffer in any comparison with Cat People. With all respect to Ryan, she’s no Nastassja Kinski, and its transformations are far superior. Sure, that had a much bigger budget: it also predates this by 35 years.

This isn’t entirely without merit, though it is definitely in the slow-burn category – we’re about half-way through before the heroine’s feral instincts properly kick in. In fact, the best thing about this might be the scene tucked away in the (lengthy – after all, there are 28 producers of one kind or another to thank!) closing credits, in which we discover that Betsy is no longer alone. I definitely wanted to see where it might have gone from there. Trimming minutes from her early group therapy sessions, etc. would have offered scope to develop that, and helped this feel more like its own beast, if you see what I mean.

However, I’ve definitely seen far worse low-budget horror. Director Burkett also wrote and edited this, and seems to know where to point the camera and how to capture audible sound. These are skills not to be pooh-poohed in the field, and it’s also to his credit that the film usually is aware of its limits, and doesn’t over-stretch itself. An interesting twist is using a different actress to play Betsy, post-transformation. perhaps making this also influenced by another horror classic, Dr. Jekyll. While the flaws here are too hard to ignore, there are quite a few positives as well, and I’m interested in seeing what Burkett could do with a larger budget, and perhaps a more original idea.

Dir: Shawn Burkett
Star: Erin R. Ryan, Josh Miller, Marylee Osborne, Justin Beahm

Knucks

  By

½
“Knucks sucks.”

I’m tempted to leave my review at that. But there’s a famous quote by critic Roger Ebert, going off on Bruce Willis flop, North: “I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it. Hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like it. Hated the implied insult to the audience by its belief that anyone would be entertained by it.” I was always impressed, and hoped one day to find a film capable of producing a similar reaction. This is… close. It is, let’s be clear, utterly terrible, with almost no redeeming qualities. Yet it’s either not bad enough, or more likely, too bad to generate such a reaction. That would be giving it more power and credit than this deserves. 

Why are we here? This is less an existential question than a desire to explain why I’m writing a review. It’s because of this synopsis: “Two women attempt to come up after beating their drug dealer to death.” That was good enough to get it on my radar. However, within a couple of minutes, it was clear I had made a terrible mistake, and was about to be in for the longest 66 minutes of my life. Here’s another quote, from the BBFC, explaining the 15 rating: “There are scenes in which a child is abducted by two men, but it is not clear what their intentions are.” The two words “not clear” are the best way to summarize the misbegotten art-wank which I endured, substituting pointless video manipulation for plot, characterization or any positive aspects.

It’s as if the makers had obtained a list of all the elements I despise most about pretentious movies, and had treated it as a request list. Random colour filters. Check. Strobe effects. Check. Shitty heavy metal soundtrack. Check. Obtuse dialogue. Check. Scenes unfolding in murky near-darkness. Check. Shaky, hand-held, extreme close-up camerawork. Check, check and, in no uncertain terms, check. The basic plot, and I use the word in its loosest way, is mostly ripped off from True Romance, with heroines and sisters Kathleen (Leidy) and Taylor (Harlan) attempting to sell a bagful of drugs obtained from the dead dealer, to someone who looks like a Kid Rock impersonator.

But this doesn’t really show up until the final fifteen minutes. Until then, we get meaningless flashbacks to their abusive childhood (of course!), in which their film-maker father seems to be involved in porn and snuff. I am not exaggerating when I say either of these would likely be more entertaining. Things come to a head, when the original owner of the drugs shows up, burbles threateningly for a bit, before keeling over. It ends in much the same way as the previous hour has unfolded: an incoherent mess. I was genuinely relieved by the short running-time, though if it had been much longer, it might well have been a rare cinematic “did not finish.” The terminally slow end credit crawl was easily the best thing about this. Largely because it indicated the end was mercifully nigh.

Dir: Gage Maynard
Star: Dasha Leidy, Hedley Harlan, Mindy Robinson, Alan Bagh

Stressed to Death

  By

★½
“Definitely a stress test.”

The concept here is intriguing. It’s just the execution – and the script in particular – which is bad. A robbery at a convenience store ends in the death of David, the husband to Victoria Garrett (Aldrich). She blames the paramedic on the scene, former soldier Maggie Hart (Holden), for the loss of her spouse, though the incident hits Maggie equally hard. She quits her job, raising daughter Jane (Blackwell) with her husband, commercial real-estate agent, Jason (Gerhardt). But Victoria hasn’t moved on – in probably the film’s most memorably loopy elements, she feeds her husband’s ashes to a pot-plant she calls David, to which she chats. She’s also clearly a believer in that saying about revenge being served cold.

For she waits a whole ten years after the incident, before putting into motion a plan for revenge, hiring a pair of thugs to kill Maggie’s family in front of her. Fortunately for her target, they’re two blithering incompetents – or maybe the script just makes it seem like they were acquired through the ‘Help Wanted’ section of Facebook Marketplace. Adding spice to the situation, she has hired Jason as her subordinate, and Jane turns out to have a crush on Victoria’s son. Complicating matters further is Maggie’s PTSD, which is naturally the movie-friendly version, only kicking in when required by the plot. It can also apparently be cured by violent trauma: specifically, someone hiring a pair of thugs to kill your family in front of you. What are the odds?

Even by the low standards of Lifetime movies, this is bad. It’s not just the script that is sloppy, the production includes a bike helmet suddenly appearing on Jane’s head, and a knife that teleports from the floor into Maggie’s hands. But let’s not kid ourselves: it’s mostly the script. I lost count of the points at which I sighed heavily. Probably peak sigh was achieved at the sequence where Maggie and Jane have been captured. The thug doesn’t just leave them alone, he falls asleep in the next room, allowing them to escape. Guess that whole thugging thing really takes it out of you. Worse, after the mother and daughter get away, they show no urgency at all, wandering around while chatting casually about Jane’s crush. Oh, look: they get caught. Again.

This all builds to a ridiculous excuse for a climax in a motel room, which ends with the police describing what happened to the chief thug. The only things that saves this from total disaster are performances generally better than the story deserves. Holden, in particular, does a decent job with her character, and actually, the chief thug is surprisingly sympathetic, when telling Maggie about his abused childhood. Or something. I expected better from Brian Skiba, an Arizona native who co-wrote this, and whose films Chokehold and .357: Six Bullets for Revenge have previously been reviewed here. While they weren’t great, they look like Oscar-winners beside Stressed to Death. I think I’m the one coming down with a case of PTSD after sitting through this.

Dir: Jared Cohn
Star: Gina Holden, Taylor Blackwell, Sarah Aldrich, Jason Gerhardt