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Released by: Breaking Glass Pictures
Released on: 3/13/2012
Director: David Blyth
Cast: Kate O'Rourke, Ta Kaea Beri, Campbell Cooley
Year: 2010
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The Movie:
This New Zealand production tells the story of a Susan (Kate O'Rourke) who's suffered severe emotional and physical trauma at the hands of her own piece-of-crap-father. Years later, when Susan is pretty much completely bonkers, she learns of a daughter she was told was stillborn is alive. Tanya (Te Kaea Beri) pays her a visit, but things don't go so well.
Susan refuses to accept Tanya and attempts to shut her out but Tanya won't take no for an answer. And then things get weird. Tanya is just as messed up as her mother, and has an unconventional way of expressing herself, and the two together are a bad combination. Susan's is already off the deep end and the addition of her once-thought dead daughter makes her plunge so deep into a mental abyss it's never known what's real and what's hallucination.
Yeah it's one of those. Ugh. Is it all in her head? Is her daughter dead and is a ghost, or is she a figment of Susan's imagination? Is she really alive and Susan's is fantasizing all these things? Is the S&M mustachioed man real? Do you really waste 70 minutes watching this? All these are perhaps unanswerable, but what's for sure is that this film is not engaging. These movies that take place all in someone's head (or allude to that fact) kind of sabotage themselves. It's tough to get absorbed into a story when it's always nagging in your mind that none of what is happening to a character is actually happening. Kind of like those dream sequences in a movie where something nasty happens that totally changes the direction of the story, only to watch the character wake up none of it was real. Seems like a cheap cop-out.
That said, this movie does have some elements that make it interesting. For one thing it has some bizarre imagery as well as some disturbing subject matter (like incest, rape), and is quite graphic in the body parts department. The FX work is pretty cheesy looking, but watching a dick get cut off looks nasty no matter what. And keep your eyes peeled for one of the most bizarre childbirth segments involving a giant vagina.
But the thing that keeps this movie from being forgettable is the performance of the lead actor, Kate O'Rourke. So many people play victims of insanity, but she is actually believable, and the range of emotion she plays is quite impressive. Peter Jackson cast her in The Lord of the Rings movies as an extra in makeup (like as an orc for example), but he missed the boat on using her to a better end. She's good and makes the movie tolerable. Ta Kaea Beri also does a fine job, and is easy on the eyes, and does some things in the story that take some guts as a young actress. But that said, it doesn't make the movie worth sitting through. Maybe though, just maybe, it'll get one of the two performers noticed so we can see them do more.
Video/Audio/Extras:
The video quality is pretty average by way of DVD standards. It has coloring that looks correct, as well as flesh tones. The black levels are deep and satisfying enough and the detail is nice. The picture has a 16:9 aspect ratio, anamorphic. At one spot around the hour mark the picture froze, and when played again, repeated the same freeze two more times, with some minor pixelation. Could be a faulty disc, rather than an authoring issue. The audio option in a 5.1 Dolby Digital one, and it sounds fine. The music is a bit loud by comparison to the dialogue, but it's not a distraction.
Extras on the disc include some short films by the feature's director and trailers for other films from the DVD label. For the shorts, “Damn Laser Vampires†runs nine minutes, and “Circadian Rhythms†is about 14 minutes and features lots of black-and-white nudity (1976 nudity at that). There's a 2-minute photo gallery, a music video (useless), and the aforementioned trailers, including one for the feature.
The Final Word:
Honestly, don't get too excited over this one.
