Tag: vigilante

Spoor

  By

★★★
“Call of the wild”

Janina Duszejko (Mandat) is a former engineer, who now lives in a small rural Polish town. She has a deep love of nature and animals. This is a belief not shared by many of the local population, who treat animals as a resource, put there for their benefit – an attitude which brings them into conflict with Duszejko. After her two dogs disappear, she goes to the authorities, but they blow her off. However, the man she suspects most, turns up dead – just the first in a series of mysterious deaths, that may be related to Jaroslav Wnetzak, a local businessman with a finger in a number of shady pies. Subsequent corpses include the police chief, who owes Wnetzak money.

With the help of Dyzio (Gierszal), an IT consultant working for the police, Duszejko is able to investigate things. She also begins a romantic relationship with visiting Czech entomologist Boros Schneider (Krobot), after he discovers Wnetzak’s body in the forest, months after the businessman had disappeared. Things come to a head when Duszejko is arrested following the death of the mayor, having been the last to have seen him alive. But what exactly is going on? Is this those shady business dealings gone wrong? Or are the animals taking revenge on those who have hunted them? While I can’t say much more, you can probably get some kind of hint to the situation, simply from the fact that it’s being reviewed here. And perhaps the poster.

Holland is a veteran director, with over 40 years of features in her native Poland, plus episodes of US shows including The Wire, The Killing and House of Cards. You can tell, since this is confident and assured, as well as providing some truly beautiful and atmospheric shots of the countryside, imbuing it with a mystical quality. Animals loom out of the mist, almost like prehistoric creatures [hey, wild boar were driven extinct in Britain during the 1600’s], and the humans may not be that much more evolved. The lines are deliberately blurred at a couple of points, such as in Wnetzak’s brothel, where the women are dressed as cats, bunnies, etc. or at a costume ball which Duszejko attends as the big, bad wolf.

She makes an interesting character: clearly smart, yet her fierce devotion is certainly a weakness, and perhaps her undoing, especially when the police, etc. blow her concerns off.  However, at 128 minutes, there feels too much slack. The subplot involving the entomologist in particular, seems to bring things lurching to a halt in the middle, just when the mysterious deaths ramp up, and should begin driving things forward. I’d have moved this element towards the beginning, part of establishing Duszejko’s character. It doesn’t serve any essential part in the main plot, requiring it to be in the position where it takes place. However, the majority of the film still works, and represents a thought-provoking and well-crafted entity for the majority of its length, that does a decent job of mixing in its message.

Dir: Agnieszka Holland
Star: Agnieszka Mandat, Patricia Volny, Jakub Gierszał, Miroslav Krobot

Mistress Killer

  By

★★★
“Mistresses cannot be exterminated!”

To my surprise, when I begin researching this film, it appears actually to be based – at least, somewhat – in reality. I give you this story from 2016. “Zhang Yufen, 58, is known in Henan province, as the “Mistress Killer” for her unusual hobby, which involves spying on her clients’ partners before confronting their lovers in public with vicious and humiliating attacks. She set up her agency, the Alliance Against Mistresses, in 2003 after her own husband admitted to having to having an affair in the 90s and left her and her son for his lover, clearing their joint bank account after 16 years of marriage… She receives around 100 calls a week in her mission to “ruthlessly exterminate those men” — and says police turn a blind eye to her assaulting other women in public.”

Unsurprisingly, the local film industry pounded on the idea, quickly popping out the Chinese equivalent of a quota quickie, running a brisk 67 minutes before the credits roll. Naturally, the film version of the vigilante, Lv Xia (Li Mengmeng), is considerably more photogenic, but the concept is the same – she busts in on men having extra-marital affairs and humiliates them and their lovers, for the benefit of their wives. The story here has the “Scandal Chaser” being seen and photographed by journalist Chen Dong (Qi). But after discovering her mission, he agrees to withhold the proof of her identity, and work with her instead. However, Liu, a businessman who had been one of Lv’s targets, doesn’t take kindly to her actions, and sends his assassin (Chen) to put a stop to her brand of justice.

It’s not a bad idea, though the way it’s developed is largely predictable, such as how Lv and Chen fall for each other. The fighting is mid-tier at best – and not often at that – but there are some quirky moments which helped sustain my interest above the Lifetime movie to which this largely aspires. I liked how Lv wears a V for Vendetta mask while in action, and was amused to hear Liu berating his minion, “Do you really think you are Leon in that movie?” The businessman has a point: “Leon” is indeed a bit crap, as company hitmen go, Lv typically disposing of him with ease.

Things did perk up in the final twenty minutes, when someone formulates a plan to capture Lv and take revenge. At first, I thought this was the humiliated mistresses getting together; it turns out to be for rather more prosaic, capitalist reasons, involving the hostile takeover of a corporation by female tycoon, Wu Yan-Mei (Li Man-Yi). She’s good as the evil villainess: she has a great laugh a slew of henchwomen, and some details of her scheme to turn the tables on Lv, are elegantly malicious. If only she’d shown up sooner. The tables end up turning, albeit in a somewhat clunky fashion and a slo-mo mass cat-fight, before one final twist. Still, I’d not be averse to a sequel, or a remake with more punch.

Dir: Geng Lei
Star: Li Mengmeng, Qi Ling, Li Man-Yi, Chen Xing-Yu,

A Killer Rising

  By

★★½
“FBI Agent Jekyll and Hyde”

At least a star of the above rating is purely for the concept, which is one just brimming with potential. The problem here is entirely down to execution that isn’t just lacklustre, it’s entirely devoid of all lustre. First and foremost, there is absolutely no reason for this to have a running time of 122 minutes, especially when the first half makes its point inside about ten, and then sits there, as if waiting for a bus. It’s a particular issue, because it’s only the second half where things get adequately interesting. You will need a great deal of patience – or, probably more likely, some household chores to take care of – in order to reach that point.

The heroine is Kacee Rhona (Beckly), an irascible FBI agent with a long history of disciplinary issues, going back to her days at Quantico. It’s perhaps not surprising, considering her childhood was a hellish landscape of abuse, from which she barely escaped at all, only after defending herself against her biological father. You do wonder how someone with such obvious psychological issues was accepted into the FBI, but whatevs. Seems she’s quite good at her job, and is now hot on the trail of a serial killer, Montague (Anderson) who has been kidnapping, raping and murdering (not necessarily in that order) a slew of women. It’s largely your standard “loose cannon with issues” thriller, with which we’re all (overly) familiar. While Beckly is… okay, the rest of the cast are well short of convincing, and the production’s resources are insufficient for what it’s trying to do.

Then, however, the killer brutally attacks Agent Rhona, leaving her literally dead for several minutes, and causing something inside her to snap. She becomes a vigilante while officially on sick leave, targetting those whom the law has not been able to punish. And who better to become a serial killer of serial killers, than someone trained to catch serial killers? It’s a bit like an unhinged, female version of Dexter, and is an awesome concept. Her colleagues are… well, for obvious reasons, somewhat ambivalent about this, when their suspicions are drawn towards one of their own kind. On the other hand, Rhona’s operation outside the law has its advantages, especially with Montague still on the loose.

I’d love to see this given the production it deserves, with a better supporting cast, and elements that accurately reflect the supposed FBI setting, which never reaches even “unconvincing”. It feels like a nicely twisted take on Silence of the Lambs, and I could imagine a young Jodie Foster or Angelina Jolie in the role of the heroine. But any remake would also need to go at the script with a pair of garden shears, removing all the extraneous nonsense which drags the front hour down to an uninteresting crawl. There was eventually marginally enough here to keep me going, yet I’d not blame anyone if they chose to cut their losses before that point.

Dir: Michael Fredianelli
Star: Stacy Beckly, Derek Crowe, Kevin Karrick, Jaren Anderson

Streets of Vengeance

  By

★½
“Porn stars vs. Incels”

This poorly-conceived and even less effectively executed cheapo, starts off looking like a home-video recording of a movie, taken off late night TV. There’s a bikini-clad hostess, who introduces the film, and it might not have been a bad idea, had they actually run with it. Cut into the movie for spoof adverts, bad infomercials, further host segments, etc. Yeah, could have been fun. Instead, it’s completely forgotten until almost the end, when she pops back up… purely to showcase a trailer for the directors’ next film, Slash-lorette Party. Verily, the level of cringe is strong in this one. If it had even embraced the eighties aesthetic for which it is clearly aiming, that would have been a credible substitute. But outside of the synthwave score by the very wonderfully named “Vestron Vulture,” there’s hardly any effort put in there either.

Instead, what you get is porn star Mila Lynn  (McKinney), who is about to quit the profession. Her boss, disgruntled by the news, delivers her up to a member of The Sword, a “men’s rights” group who have been abducting and torturing other adult entertainment stars, blaming them for causing addiction to porn. Mila manages to escape, beating her captor to death with a baseball bat, and sets up a vigilante squad, who will take the fight to the members of The Sword, and show them the error of their ways.

The above sounds considerably more interesting than the reality. I will say, that most of the actresses make thoroughly convincing porn stars – unfortunately, this is mostly in the way they can’t act their way out of a paper-bag. The pacing is also terrible. At 101 minutes, it’s at least twenty too long, and takes far too long to get to the meat of the matter. As a result, it commits the cardinal sin of grindhouse cinema: being boring. This is in part because it insists on being didactic, pushing its moral viewpoint to an obvious and rather painful degree. That’s another sin in which you never see good grindhouse flix indulge. I Spit on Your Grave didn’t need to spell out any obvious messages.

There’s a certain hypocrisy here, given the female nudity on view, frequently combined with things like the owners having their throat slit, New York Ripper style. None of the main actresses indulge, implying they are in some way “better” than that. It also fails to make a coherent argument against The Sword’s proposition – basically that, without porn, there’d be no porn addiction, and those who profit are no better than pushers. It’s just taken as “bad,” m’kay? Of course, the brutality with which Mila and her pals react, is morally little if any different from The Sword: an uncomfortable truth the film never dares address. All of which I could probably tolerate, if this was anything like fun to watch. It isn’t, and I couldn’t.

Dir: Paul Ragsdale, Angelica De Alba
Star: Delawna McKinney, Anthony Iava To’omata, Paige Le Ney, Daniel James Moody

Restless (2020)

  By

★★
“Mom on a mission”

Single mother Naomi Harper (Anderson) is devoted to her son, and he to her. In an effort to help Mom make ends meet, he gets a job working for notorious local “businessman”, Noah Oliver (Wilson). When her child turns up dead, Naomi is sure that Oliver had something to do with it. The police, in particular Detectives Emory Kota (Conell) and August Hayes ( Jeziorski), don’t necessarily disagree, but their hands are tied. This is partly due to a shortage of actionable evidence, partly because Oliver’s connections run deep into the local political and judicial establishment in Conyers, Georgia, making it impossible to take action against him. Well, at least officially. Naomi has no such limitations, and this apparently mild-mannered loan officer has a background that may prove of help.

The script here isn’t bad. There are a number of interesting angles, such as the parallel actions of a vigilante, working in same area as Naomi, and targetting those who consider themselves above the law. Naomi isn’t the only strong female character either, with Det. Kota frustrated by the restrictions of her position. Then there’s Sophia (Rachel Burger), Oliver’s right-hand ma… er, woman, who proves capable of handling herself physically as well. Though I probably would have been more impressed had Naomi not done that crappy, gangsta “holding the gun at an angle” thing, as she headed towards her final confrontation with Oliver. Nobody with experience and an interest in being taken seriously would be caught dead doing that.

However, the problems here are most readily apparent in the resources here. Or, to be more accurate, the lack thereof. Even though the film tries to work within the budgetary limitations, these are so severe, they can’t be hidden. For instance, scenes which are supposed to take place in a police station, very clearly don’t. Indeed, there’s very little effort to make it look like anything, except a bare, empty room. The same goes for a number of other locations, where the bare minimum appears to have been done in terms of set dressing. Hardly less glaring are the plugs for local venue, Triplz Lounge. I’m sure it’s a lovely place.

Another weakness is that most of the actors don’t appear to fit their characters. Wilson is probably the worst offender, never being convincing as a mob boss – he’s just not intimidating or threatening enough. But to a lesser extent, the same goes for Anderson. Despite copious flashbacks to a time when her son was alive, she rarely seemed like a distraught mother, pushed into unthinkable acts by the callous and indifferent hand of fate.  She’s not a bad actress, competent enough from a technical point of view. There just wasn’t any reason for the viewer to pay the emotional buy-in to her portrayal. I’d not mind seeing what Jackson and his team could do with more money, and I’ve certainly seen worse. Here though, the challenges prove just too much for them to overcome.

Dir: Rodney Jackson
Star: Tai Anderson, Tavares M. Wilson, Robyn Conell, Will Jeziorski

Hellfire

  By

★
“Hell would, on the whole, be preferable.”

Ir’s not often that I feel my life has become a tiny bit worse for having seen a film, but Hellfire may just about qualify. It’s such a mean-spirited and unpleasant experience, weighed down further by technical ineptitude and actresses who can’t act. Any potential in the somewhat interesting idea – which makes for a good synopsis, at least – is entirely wasted. Someone is killing young women, apparently in an attempt to protect Father McKenzie, a priest under investigation for alleged sexual abuses of pupils at a Catholic school. Chucky (Mercedes) rounds up two of the girls from her class, tattooist Athena (Peach) and stripper Lilly (Divine). After surviving some attacks from a man in glasses (Hoffman), and a betrayal from a former teacher, they decide to go on the offense and track down the pedopriest.

The first fifteen minutes kinda live up to that, albeit in an obviously cheap way – and Lilly is the worst stripper ever, failing to remove even a single item of clothing. I think the point at which this jumped the shark was the extended scene of the trio smoking weed and dropping acid. Watching other people take drugs is among the worst cinematic sins. Would anyone pay to watch me sink a six-pack of beer? Exactly. It is, admittedly, a drug trip necessary to the plot, since it allows the women to recall their abuse at the hands (literally) of McKenzie. But, especially in a film which runs barely 70 minutes including credits, it’s a waste of time. Things only go downhill from there, with the movie basically killing time as they develop their Catholic schoolgirl vigilante personas. Which isn’t anything like as interesting as it should be, attention being diverted by faux pas like the claim the previous victim’s deaths were made to look like natural causes. Oh, so the woman we see in the opening scene, getting hung from a rope in her shower, tripped on the soap or something?

Then there’s the final attack on their former school, where they face the man in glasses, in what may be the worst fight scene in cinematic history, despite the director’s efforts to jazz things up by throwing bad digital FX and screechy sound on top of it. The three then take their revenge on Father McKenzie, and I guess I have to thank the film for introducing me to a genuinely new experience: feeling sorry for a pedophile. Because the former victims’ behaviour is so vile, and carried out with such an abundance of glee, as to make me lose all sympathy for them. It doesn’t help that, of the lead actresses, only Peach knows how to deliver a line with anything inhabiting the same continental landmass as authenticity. The brief running time turns out to be a merciful release, as I don’t think I could have stood a full 90 minutes of this. Let us never speak of it again.

Dir: Moses
Star: Mercedes the Muse, Knotty Peach, Irie Divine, Shawn Hoffman

Good Morning, Verônica: season one

  By

★★★½
“Brazil nuts.”

Verônica Torres (Müller) is a second-generation cop in the Sao Paulo, Brazil police force, though her father left there under a cloud, and in circumstances which are unclear. Torres’s job is as a paper-pusher in the homicide division, but when the victim of a date-rapist kills herself right in front of Veronica, she decides to make a stand. She goes public, asking to hear from other victims, or any abused women, and is contacted by Janete Cruz (Morgado). Her common-law husband, Brandão (Moscovism), is very disturbed, a thoroughly nasty piece of work, and may even be a serial killer. However, he is also a member of the military police and has powerful friends, in a shadowy conspiracy which could have ties to Verônica ‘s father. She’s going to have to tread very carefully if she’s going to get the evidence she needs from Janete, to convict Brandão.

The first of the eight x 45-minute episodes was fairly humdrum, once you got past the shock of the opening suicide, The synopsis made it feel somewhat fringey in terms of the site, perhaps sounding not much more intense than a Hallmark TV movie. But the second part focused on Brandão. The gloves well and truly came off, as we discovered exactly the evil he can do. Rather than a dating site predator, it became clear there were bigger fish in need of frying. While the dating site plotline does proceed, it eventually (and this is a very good thing) takes a definite back-seat to the meat of the series, which is Veronica’s pursuit of Brandão. Fortunately, she is not alone, with help from both a forensic pathologist and the department’s tech guy. But there are those in the department who don’t want her to succeed – though whether purely out of professional jealousy, or for more sinister motives, is one of the issues the heroine has to untangle.

There are some very good performances at the heart of this, which faintly echoes Silence of the Lambs in its pursuit of a serial killer by a rookie investigator. To be honest, I probably found Brandão a more chilling and believable killer than Buffalo Bill (though not, of course, Hannibal Lecter!), with Verônica almost as sympathetic as Clarice Starling. You definitely need to stay the course, as I felt it got markedly better as it unfolded. The last couple of episodes have some shocking twists in the narrative; let’s just say, not everyone you expect to survive, will do so. I also appreciated how, at the end, Verônica is entirely forced to rely on her own abilities, with no help from anybody. It’s her vs. Brandão – again, echoing the end of Silence. The script does a particularly good job of tying up its loose ends, while leaving the door very much open to a second series. If that continues the steady improvement this showed over its course, I’m definitely looking forward to it.

Creator: Raphael Montes
Star: Tainá Müller, Camila Morgado, Eduardo Moscovism, Antônio Grassi
a.k.a. Bom Dia, Verônica

Snow Black

  By

★
“Put this on your blacklist. And that’s snow joke.”

This isn’t quite the worst action heroine film I’ve ever seen. That dubious honour still goes to Naked Avenger, I think. But this one certainly deserves to be in the conversation. I don’t think a movie has ever lost my interest so quickly. Literally before the opening credits rolled, I realized this was the kind of almost entirely undiluted rubbish, I wouldn’t waste five minutes on, if I didn’t have to for this site. How bad was it? The film is still on, and I’ve already started writing the review. That’s virtually unprecedented. The main problem is audio which appears to have recorded on a flip-phone, from the bottom of a swimming pool. It’s among the worst I’ve ever heard on a commercial release. Initially, I thought it might be the source, but the Prime Video version was just as intolerable. At least that version had closed captions.

The plot is no great shakes, though has some potential. Sarah Camden (Buckner) comes home from the Marines to bury her mother. While she’s at home, her little sister is killed on the streets of her local town. Sarah – code name Snow Black – realizes it has been taken over by gangsters and drug dealers, with even the mayor in their service. After her father is also murdered, she decides to clean up the neighbourhood. The issues with this are plentiful, beginning with the fact our heroine’s tattoos wouldn’t actually be allowed on a Marine. Then there’s the fact she doesn’t actually fight anyone much until 55 minutes in – and this only runs 80 minutes. While Buckner looks at least somewhat the part, when she finally gets into action, it takes place in slow-motion, presumably to disguise her lack of fighting ability. This is probably also the first time I found myself wishing for some rapid-fire editing. 

Let me be absolutely clear. There is hardly a single aspect of this, which is not excruciatingly incompetent. The only scene that is even slightly memorable is when Sarah’s Aunt Sydney goes into battle herself, taking on a barful of gang members. She’s played by former Bond girl Gloria Hendry, from Live and Let Die and Black Belt Jones. Now in her seventies, it’s not a great action sequence, to put it mildly. But that it happens at all, is the best thing the movie has to offer. They should have made the whole film about her and Sarah’s father, played by another veteran action star, Van Clief (the Black Dragon), who is approaching eighty. The concept of senior citizen vigilantes is something which might have done a better job of holding my attention. 

Instead, this is 100% one of those films which I had to sit through, so that you do not have to. Find something, anything else to do, and you can thank me later. Oh, hey: the end credits are now rolling. It’s clearly time to wrap this up.

Dir: Robert D. Parham
Star: Sarah V. Buckner, Robert D. Parham, Ron Van Clief, Humberto Gonzalez 

Knock Knock

  By

★★★½
“I can only apologize, darling…”

This is the kind of film which makes for very uncomfortable date night viewing, simply because the situation presented is likely to lead to awkward conversations. Happily married architect Evan Webber (Reeves) has the house to himself for the weekend, his wife having gone with their two kids to the seaside, leaving him free to work on a project. A stormy night ensues, until a knock at the door, and he finds two lost young women, Genesis (Izzo) and Bel (de Armas), shivering on the doorstep. He can hardly make them stay there, so lets them in. Almost immediately, something is wrong, though initially this falls into the “Too good to be true” category. For they are nymphomaniac flight attendants, and inevitably – though after a credible struggle – Evan succumbs to their relentless charms.

The next morning, however, the reality proves less pleasant, and it’s all downhill from there. For the pair are avenging angels, honey-trapping married men, then savagely punishing them for their infidelity, and Evan is not their first victim. This development should be no real surprise if you’ve seen Roth’s other films, where bad things almost inevitably tend to result from good. A nice trip to Europe became kidnapping, torture and murder in Hostel. Social activism turned into cannibalistic dismemberment in Green Inferno. So the first half of this was largely an exercise in waiting for things to go wrong, along with strenuously assuring Chris that, in similar circumstances, my assistance would strictly be limited to passing them towels through the letter-box. I highly recommend not deviating from this answer, under any circumstances. For she was firmly convinced, whatever happened to Evan in the second half was well-deserved.

The resulting punishment is certainly not pleasant, with his home-life wrecked, both literally and figuratively. Though there were a couple of ways it could have been improved. Firstly, even with some straggly facial hair, he’s still Keanu Reeves, not exactly your average guy. He likely has to beat off real nymphomaniac flight attendants with a stick, on an everyday basis. It’d have been more effective with a more homely leading man, to whom the audience could relate. And I’d rather have seen Genesis and Bel evaporate like smoke in the night, leaving no evidence of their presence, save their impact on Evan. A little more subtlety, and less scrawling of “DADDY’S LITTLE WHORE” on the family portraits would have gone a long way here, I feel.

Still, Roth is not exactly known for his delicate approach to cinema, and as a blunt instrument illustrating in female form the perils of infidelity, this works well enough. It’s also a rare entry in the “home invasion” field where the invaders are entirely women. À l’interieur (Inside) is one of the few predecessors there, and it’s no shame this doesn’t quite reach the same heights of sheer insanity – very few movies do. It’s still a cautionary tale which had me shifting uncomfortably in my seat often enough to justify its existence, as well as casting wary glances over at Chris.

Dir: Eli Roth
Star: Keanu Reeves, Ana de Armas, Lorenza Izzo, Aaron Burns

Bit

  By

★★★½
“The Lost Girls”

There are times when I am bracing myself, going into a movie. Here’s the synopsis for this one: “A transgender teenage girl on summer vacation in Los Angeles fights to survive after she falls in with four queer feminist vampires, who try to rid the city’s streets of predatory men.” Given my long-standing aversion to message movies, this seemed like 90 minutes of my worst nightmare. What had I let myself in for? But this proved to be surprisingly accessible – even for those of us who are neither transgender nor queer, and are enrolled in the Camille Paglia school of feminism.

It reminded me of We Are The Night, about a similar group of female “party vampires” who embrace a newcomer to their ranks. Though as the tagline above suggests, I guess both movies owe a large debt to The Lost Boys. To be honest, if I hadn’t read the synopsis, I wouldn’t know the heroine, Laurel (Maines) is intended to be transgender. There is discussion of some previous trauma before she leaves home after graduating, but it’s never her defining characteristic. Her new pals are relentlessly feminist, to the point of misanthropic. According to their leader, Duke (Hopper), the prime directive is: “You never, ever turn a man. Men can’t handle power. They have it already, and look what they’ve done with it.”  Yet her own handling of power is highly questionable: she admits to using it for “indiscriminate” killing, and compares their group to terrorists. By the end, Laurel is openly challenging that unbreakable rule – as she should.

Their two performance are the glue which holds this together, in particular as it depicts the slowly developing conflict between Laurel and Duke. The script also plays a part, revealing the truth about Duke’s origins and powers – and the more we learn, the more questionable the leader becomes. Yet there are also moments of dry humour, which stop this from becoming a grim fairy tale. For instance, Duke telling Laurel, “The first rule of Bite Club…” When this triggers little more than a derisive snort from the new recruit, one of her lieutenants pipes up, dead-panning, “Juggalos was taken.” This kind of thing fits in: I suspect in such a scenario, the vampires would not take themselves entirely seriously.

The flaws tend to be when the film does occasionally topple over into self-importance. The worst offender is probably Vlad, the master of their species. While the film opens with some snarky comments about Twilight, his performance is far more hammy than anything delivered in that franchise. There’s a badly underdeveloped plot about vampire-hunters, which is little more than “Boys are stupid”. I could also have done without a soundtrack which appears to be the writer-director’s iPhone on random, or the gratuitous Death Valley Girls concert [I can only presume they’re pals of his, given some free publicity in the movie]. All told though, this was considerably better than my prejudices would have had me believe going in. The lesson here appears to be, don’t judge a film by its synopsis.

Dir: Brad Michael Elmore
Star: Nicole Maines, Diana Hopper, Zolee Griggs, James Paxton