Rating: B
Dir: Teddy Grennan
Star: Sam Brooks, Tu Morrow, Michael Weaver, Tommi Rose
This is probably one of those movies where, the less you know going in, the better. Part of the joy is in seeing how the various pieces fit together, and how what seems an irrelevance at the time, becomes significant later on. To give one relatively benign example: a lecture on Greek mythology will become important, after you’ve completely forgotten about it. I must admit, I did notice some things as early as the opening credits. But, again, I discarded these as nothing more than a cute in-joke by the director. It was then kinda cool when it became key to the main narrative. Please excuse the high degree of vagueness in this paragraph.
More helpfully: Otto (Brooks) wanted to be a homicide detective, but an incident with a fellow officer, led to this career going on hold. He’s now working clean-up on some spectacularly bloody death scenes, in his down time smoking weed and indulging his fondness for horror movies. Meanwhile, his girlfriend Lex (Morrow) is expecting their first child, and they’re preparing to move in together. Otto discovers what he believes to be a connection between some of the crimes, though his former boss, Detective Cobain (Weaver), is far from convinced. He’s not the only one: to be fair, it’s a spectacularly weird connection. It doesn’t get any less bizarre, the more Otto digs into events, believing it can give him a way off the janitorial squad, and back onto the force.
This may not sound a particularly good fit for a horror festival. Because it’s mostly the stuff I can’t talk about, which puts it undeniably in our wheelhouse. Any horror fan will get a kick out of Otto’s fandom, and how it informs his investigation. Once you see what’s happening, you’ll start to get ahead of the plot. Yet the tone becomes progressively bleaker, with an almost relentless progression. Grennan finally takes his foot off our throat with the very last shot; I kinda wish he hadn’t. Until then, it has been getting into Se7en territory, combining a killer with an imagination and an agenda, and an investigator who doesn’t realize when his single-minded dedication is putting those close to him at risk.
It takes a little while for the pieces to be laid out, and for the overall picture to become clear. At one early point, I thought Otto and Lex were the killers. Um. No. Definitely stick with it. Brooks gives a winning performance, that reminded me of someone, though I’m damned if I could work out who. It’s all enough to make me willing to overlook some of the more implausible elements (let’s just say, I open packages on their arrival). Grennan delivers a film that definitely is darker than I thought it might be. It reels you in, while also paying tribute to some classics of the genre, then reminds you real-life horror is very different to the cinematic kind.
Screened on Phoenix FearCon night at the Albuquerque Film Festival