Associate professor Dr. Emily Burns is forced by two masked men into a small square shaped room, confined by four faux wood paneled walls and layered with a thin tattered carpet. Oblivious to the reason behind her sudden captivity, Emily frantically searches the room, desperately searching for clues for a potential escape and potentially why she’s been locked away. Emily also realizes she’s suffering from incapacitating headaches, fragmented memories, and she discovers has a musket size growth on the back of her neck. Her masked captors visit her often, inquiring about the date January 11th and if she’s able to complete her mentor’s work, but Emily can’t put the pieces together; she has to puzzle together the clues she discovers in the bleak room that might be her only way to truly understand her situation.
“Riddle Room” (also known as “Breakaway”) is a mystery thriller based on the clue finding, puzzle solving, race against the clock room escape concepts that are highly popular usually associated with team building exercises or a fun thing to do on any given night. Director Bryan Binder keeps the air enigmatic and unloads a blindside ending that’s a rare and unique quality for a director’s freshman feature film. The characters are with attributes of shapeshifting intrigues that aid in the mysteries or the riddles, if you will. The “Riddle Room” has everything a traditional live escape room would be fitted with: clues placed in all parts of the room, a sense of tremendous urgency, and even a countdown timer. Yet, the pressure isn’t necessarily transferred onto the captivated viewer; instead, Dr. Emily Burns puzzling predicament enthralls much of the story’s fascination.
Marisa Stober is cast as the lead character Dr. Emily Burns, who majorly is the film’s lone wolf actress, and she attempts to put Emily in a completely complexing situation, but doesn’t quite sell her solitary performance as she leads Emily along with such ease through the room’s clues and is able to easily get the quick upper hand on her captors. However, the ease in both areas might be contributed to film’s surprising, if yet impractical, twist finale, which only makes for a good movie night and not a nonfictional masterpiece. Binder wrote the screenplay as well that’s needs some fine tune polishing. Between Emily’s fragmented memory moments and when Emily’s entire story comes together at the end, some questions about Emily’s status and her arrival to the situation still go unanswered.
Breaking Glass Pictures and Vicious Circle Films distributes the first film under the Three Ring Entertainment produced credit onto DVD this February. The video quality is presented in a widescreen 16:9 aspect ratio on a dual layer compressed disc, which is kind of odd since the film is roughly 80 minutes and not very effects heavy, and is fairly clean with vivid coloring and natural tones. There’s slight selective aliasing moments on the faux wood paneled room, but doesn’t hinder the film’s overall video quality. From an audio standpoint, the English Dolby Digital 5.1 is noticeably unbalanced with much of Stober’s dialogue, specifically whispering, going unheard or lost within the Henrik Åström soundtrack. The comprehensibility from Emily’s masked captor’s monotoned produced voice puts Stober’s dialogue tracks to shame. The special features are nicely abundant with cast and crew interviews, behind the scenes featurette, cast auditions, investor scene, a bonus trailer, and a making of the “Experiment.”
“Riddle Room” doesn’t have any thrill shortcomings, leaving the story’s beginning and end open to focus primarily on Emily’s high strung bewilderment. Even though the ending falls a bit flat, I suspect that Bryan Binder is an upcoming writer-director to keep an eye. I’d like to see a follow up sequel to “Riddle Room” under the same cast and crew to continue the development of Dr. Emily Burns, to get her status update, and to understand more of the plight. A companion piece would nicely complete Binder’s seemingly unfinished “Riddle Room” narrative, but as a standalone feature, satisfaction comes easy enough through what’s already written and recorded for this 2016 film.
Category Archives: Chilly Thrilly
Dark. Alone. Evil, Deformed Children. “Confined” review!
Julia Streak begins a nightshift security position at a grand and abandoned apartment complex in the city. The job is her last chance to prove that she can take care of her daughter, Clara, after a bout with a psychotic illness. Paired up with Cooper, a wheelchair bound antisocial security guard whose been overseeing the estate since the beginning, Streak and Cooper begin their first shift on the job together in the dark and elaborately minacious building. When Streak discovers and opens up a mysterious locked door that leads to a subterranean maze of disheveled and vacant rooms void of security cameras. What Streak discovers will force her to battle with her own inner demons and struggle with a maddening presence that truly terrifies her.
“Confined,” the UK title of the American 2015 film, “The Abandoned,” is the debut directorial of NYU Tisch School of the Arts graduate Eytan Rockaway and penned by Ido Fluk. The cast is blend of well-known veteran actors with lesser-knowns who’ve been in the industry for a number of years. “The Lost Boys” and “Sleepers” star Jason Patric co-headlines as the crippled Cooper and he stars alongside Louisa Krause, an actress observed more frequently in independent features, as the disturbed and desperate Julia Streak. Then there is low and raspy voiced actor Mark Margolis, better known for his Emmy nominated role in “Breaking Bad” or, as I remember him from, as the merciless landlord from the first “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective” film. Margolis dons an excellent creepy homeless man looking for a place to crash during a deathly cold and rainy night. To round out the cast is the authoritative appearance of Ezra Knight, whose seen more video game and television show work than his share of feature films.
Rockaway’s directing style works mediocrely with the story’s threatening nature, establishing a catacomb-like surrounding in Julia Streak’s discovery during “Confined’s” second act, but compared to the setup of characters in the beginning, Rockaway has an inconsistency. Rockaway flourishes better with his use of angles, his ability to frame medium and close up shots, and his eye for soft color tones, that when all combined, setup for an effective foreboding mood. The second act takes a on another role that diminishes the first act’s sheer mysticism and menacing structures of the Julia character and her motivation for this newfound position as a security guard. Even though the darker scenes add fear to any horror movie, the darker scenes in this particular semi-supernatural feature are a technical mishap that become more of a hinderance to the story than being a horrific bonus.
The story doesn’t exactly come through in the end either. The Fluk and Rockaway rendition of one woman’s disturbing breakthrough attempts to enter the challenging and conflicted mind of a person dealing with real and hidden demons, but falls annoyingly flat, not really delivering that “ah ha” moment or twist at the end. An experiment wash came over the last fifteen minutes or so when Cooper and Streak are in the dreadful basement, fighting off the presence in the old upscale apartment complex. The U.S. title, “The Abandoned,” fits more appropriately to the story than does “Confined” as abandoned is a double, if not triple, entrendre with the apartment building being abandoned, the abandonment with the basement presences, and with Streaks own issue with abandonment. Confined is far from being a terrible title, as I do believe confined has it’s own underlining meanings in the film, but just not as provocative.
By far, Jason Patric’s character, Cooper, adds a little liveliness to the feature. I’ve never experienced Patric’s ability to be on the level of cold and sarcastic. Truly a treat up until the story’s momentum changes that focuses more on Streak. Louisa Krause didn’t transcend enough belief in Julia Streak. I thought her performance was overly stale and her character was also poorly written to the point where I thought Julia Streak should have characterized as a 13-year-old girl. Streak is suppose to be a strong, feminine character and that does come through at certain points, even if those points during the film seem pointless, unnatural, and meaningless. Yet, Streak, for a kick boxer and as a mother fighting for her daughter, is fairly weak, whimpering at times during peril. She also doesn’t follow the job’s guidelines, showing that the job she needs to be there for her daughter is not necessarily important enough to keep.
“Confined” is a release of the UK distributed 101 Films and was produced by the rather young production company C Plus Pictures here in the States. 101 Films graciously provided me with an online screener, so I can’t comment on the bonus features or the audio or video quality. “Confined” has its own demons in the form of plot holes and some unfinished revisions, but has more life by means of the more experienced actors in Patric and Margolis. Check out the atmospheric “Confined” for yourself and maybe your interpretation would be more open minded than my confined outlook that abandoned all hope near the finale for this feature.
Closer to Evil and God. “A Frankenstein Story” review!
Victor, a pioneering and experimental genetic scientist, has done the impossible, cloned a living human baby and named the girl Elizabeth. Obsessed with learning from his creation, Victor works tirelessly, neglecting his wife and two children. He also neglects a dark secret from his past that threatens everything he’s worked for and achieved. Religious group and lawful prosecutors blind him from the underlining and he continues with his research, diving deeper into the mysteries of Elizabeth. When Victor’s dark past catches up with him and reveals itself, he becomes forced into protecting his family and his creation Elizabeth from harm.
The Billy Senese sophomore written and directed film about the inevitable consequences of cloning shares a familiar similarity to being an adult version of Larry Cohen’s monster baby macabre “Its Alive.” Instead of hideous and murderous Davies baby, “A Frankenstein Story” caters more to realism with a deformed, genetically developed child growing up in pain and in secret. Senese tunes into a style that’s comparable to the likes of “Contagion” director Steven Soderbergh, soaked in a contrast of composure and slightly solemn.
The “A Frankenstein Story” title is a UK title. In the USA, the film goes more recognizably under “Closer to God,” which is a line withdrawn from the film, and while I do think “Closer to God” is a more suitable title, the gothic-like title has holds water in an off color way. Aside from a man creating a human out of biological genetics instead of using body parts and electricity, the Senese film homages the old Mary Shelley tale in some other respects. Lead actor Jeremy Childs plays Victor and we all know Victor is a the first name to the titular character Victor Frankenstein in Shelley’s story. Also, Senese, wether intentionally or not, has envisioned and dressed Childs as the creator and the monster. Victor is toweringly tall, freakishly broad shoulders, and has a square like face, making him appear like The Creature.
Senese’s narrative has promise at the very beginning and the very end with everything else in between being quite stagnant in developing and displaying Victor’s awfully well hidden secret. There also isn’t any exposed motivation between Victor, and some of the other characters, in behind the laboratory conceiving of Elizabeth. The only conclusion that’s explicit is that Victor becomes obsessed with being God, a very fine line between being human and the Almighty, putting the science more in the background and putting his fatherly strides first in defeating nature.
The High Fliers Films DVD hit retail shelves in the UK this past Tuesday, January 25th. The disc was a DVD-R review screener and contained just the film so I can’t speak upon or review the bonus material or the film’s quality. However, we’re not totally sold on Billy Senese take on the mad scientist genre, even with a semi-favorable review. The last 15 minutes is intense, tragic, and compelling that the second act needed so desperately to keep interest and to keep the story developing along.
Stopping Evil Takes Relentless Determination. “Bound to Vengeance” review!
Twenty-one year old Eve has been chained to a basement structure of a desolate house in the desert. She turns the tables on Phil, her sexual predator, by clocking him hard with a stone brick and escaping his hellish domain, until she realizes, through Phil’s pictorial archive, that he has more girls in similar captivity. Driven by guilt over her sister’s own demise at the hands of their captor, Eve sets forth a nonstop mission to release girls no matter the cost even if that means bringing her injured rapist along for the ride. As they stop from location to location, not all the victims are as calm and collected as Eve and her predator isn’t the only dangerous one in this particular sex trafficking ring.
“Bound to Vengeance,” also known under the working title “Reversal,” would naturally seem from first glance reading the title as a rape-revenge exploitation film by José Manuel Cravioto, except the story begins in the basement with Eve’s escape. Cravioto’s film fast forwards past the pre-show character story development, the terrifying abduction, and the uncomfortable rape scenes or sequences. Instead, the story bee lines straight toward the revenge act, raising Eve out of the ashes like a worn torn Phoenix and obtaining the upper hand on Phil. From there, only sporadic interjections of her prior abduction are revealed through video tape footage of her and her boyfriend. Even without displaying all the horrible things that have happened to Eve, a successfully conveyed cognizance of her strife goes without saying, or in this case, showcasing because the Rock Shaink Jr. and the late Keith Kjornes, whom I remember from his first penned wacky work in “Repligator,” cover Phil’s monstrous and unquenchable sexual rampage through the scared and scarred eyes of all the victims Eve intends on liberating and from Phil’s spew of lies from his own snake forked tongue.
Dark Factory Entertainment, for a company as a whole, is as small as a guppy when compared to bigger, badder fish in the ocean; however, “Bound to Vengeance” is like a piranha, a flyspeck river fish with a vicious bite. I’m also impressed to see “Kindergarten Cop” star Richard Tyson presenting a delightfully decadent performance in his character Phil, whose a mid-40’s man living a double life, living the American dream with a beautiful wife, innocent young child, and living in a grand house while a darker, hidden side revels in an oversight role in the world of sex slavery. Phil represents the very definition of a very real evil inside our society and Tyson, through that slightly raspy and baritone voice of his, brings out the character’s warranted ugliness. Tyson opposites Stephanie Charles, saddling into the empowering female role Eve, and Charles meets the veteran Tyson eye-for-eye on all their scenes together, never once sensing a performance recession.
The rape-revenge flick, minus the rape, concentrates, just outside the surface, around the sex slavery ring. In fact, the insightful story is quite educational and informative, sectoring separate pieces of the sex trafficking ring from a simple abduction, restraint, and rape to a criminal empire consisting of various locations and various hands in this particular ring. Victims also go through stages of stockholm syndrome, such as with one of the girls Eve attempts to free, but she’s too far gone under the influence of Phil and his forceful philandering friends. And for a film that’s about sex trafficking, sex has nearly been omitted from the entirety with only some disheveled and scanty covered women, some with BDS&M outfits. Criavioto’s suspense thriller breaks the narrative barriers without being, story suggestively, sexually explicit and gratuitous.
The High Fliers distributed DVD and Dark Factory Entertainment production is a win-win for both companies where dynamic actors and sexually charged subject matter thoroughly straps you forcibly in the passenger seat and causes a five-finger death grip on the oh-shit handle bar. Prepare to have your eye balls glued to screen and your jaw drop when each scene becomes more intense than the other, from girl-to-girl, to house-to-house. Gravitate to this release as soon as possible as I swear disappointment will be far, far away from any reaction bestowed upon this Cravioto film.
#Programming_Evil. “Nightmare_Code” review!
Brilliant programmer Brett Desmond has been hired at a tech start-up to quickly complete the groundbreaking coding of a previous programmer Foster Cotten who went on a murderous rampage at the start-up’s tenth floor office right before killing himself. Desmond, struggling with the federal government breathing down his and his family’s necks due in part of him leaking sensitive classified material, works night and day and around the clock to crack Cotten’s code for ROPER, a behavior recognition program. A small work group remains with Desmond during the day, but at night, Desmond sleeps at the office, working aggressively to make the deadline and get his life back in order. The further Desmond or anyone else becomes familiar with the code, the code starts to modify their behavior, twisting their thoughts, and succumbing them to it’s will of the dead programmer.
From time to time again, the film industry on the subject of pioneer technology relays information upon the fears and consequences of intertwining arrogant brilliancy and controversial technology. From the genres of cyber punk to Sci-Fi horror, decades old films such as the virtual reality plotted “The Lawnmower Man” and “Virtuosity” to the more recent “Transcendence,” transferring consciousness into the machine, have been outspoken against the use of behavior modification and recognition programs. The idea behind the notion can said that the person envisioning the possibilities of such software will become obsessed, power hungry, or vengeful if the creation is taken away from them to which all three can be attributed to director Mark Netter’s 2014 film “Nightmare Code.”
Shot entirely through a surveillance-like setup and notebook web cams, “Nightmare Code,” for most of the duration, is viewed through four screens as like security footage. Netter and cinematographer Robert Fernandez designed this structure not for the sole purpose of a novelty exhibition, but to also confine characters in a small box coded by technology, as explained in an DVD’s bonus featurette, and creating a sense of isolation and distant connections that make the life of a programmer very lonely and depressing which develops in the characters very thoroughly. The story is told through the virtual eyes of ROPER, using it’s self-awareness and advanced modules to voyeuristically watch the small group of programmers and manically motivate their actions by use of altered video projections. ROPER also accesses the past, filling in the gaps that only the infamous story of the genius Foster Cotton can fill, and by accessing the past, the dead programmer’s coding can be understood for it’s malevolent behavior modification.
“Nightmare Code” is complimented by an underrated cast whom work well together through the smaller ROPER displays in the small screen film industry. Andrew J. West, better known for his role as the Terminus cannibal Gareth on “The Walking Dead,” takes on the protagonist role of Brett Desmond who battles legal and family trouble and West epitomizes isolation by effectively taking a man with a moral conscious in leaking immoral government information and leading him down a path of legal morality, but at the same time, being unfaithful, deceitful, and prone to corruption. He becomes pitted against antagonist Foster Cotton, played by veteran actor and long time supporting actor Googy Gress, notably recognized as a NASA mission controller from Ron Howard’s “Apollo 13.” The two foes never have screen time together as their stories live separate lives, tangled by their connection to ROPER, and so without that nourishment from the other actor, West and Gress use their talents to virtually interact with one another, developing a realistic struggling relationship that isn’t really there. The characters that surround Desmond and Cotton are negatively affected by both main characters and Mei Melançon’s supporting character Nora Huntsman figures into that coded nightmare as she becomes affectionate with Desmond. Even though he’s married, Nora feels the urge to fulfill her needs after separating herself from addictions: gaming, abusive boyfriend, and drugs. Melançon, who had portrayed a minor role as a major character, Psylocke, in the mutant world of “X-Men: The Last Stand,” had another hugely important role as a side dish techie lover, but her role doesn’t seem very present and that might because of the editing technique to create the dooming cyber vision.
Netter’s resulting editing style inefficiently told the story, I thought. We’re well aware that ROPER can mislead the performance buggy human race, but ROPER, in my mind, wasn’t responsible for some of the delayed or fast forwarded actions of the characters seen through the security footage as it stylishly seemed unimportantly and pointless. Luckily, these particular editing moments are far and few in between and don’t exactly hinder the narrative. What does hinder the narrative are the quick, considerably choppy, edited scenes. Netter creates long, sometimes drawn out, scenes to convey the office solitude, but then transitions to the numerous and quickly implemented scenes that spawn a constant stop and go narrative that loses the ominous factor. The longer scenes tend to generate gloom, dread, and despair. Supporting characters become underdeveloped in the quickly edited in scenes, affecting not only life recovering Nora, but also the rest of Desmond’s team – Louis, Kevin, and Ray – who become the underdeveloped characters and they are worthless to the viewer, essentially. Still, check out the Tonya Kay scenes as you might care about hers.
The Indie Rights Inc. produced film and MVD distributed release has a clean and sleek 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen presentation. Colors seem balanced and bright. There lies some minor noise, but that only adds to the security cam charm. The Dolby Digital 5.1 audio is clean and balanced in all channels and douses with Ari Balouzian’s synth soundtrack that embarks to terrorize. Balouzian’s score reminds me of Ennio Morricone’s “The Thing” theme, developing a soundtrack character that contributes to the intensity of “Nightmare Code.” Extras includes the film with commentary and a handful of featurettes explaining briefly the characters, the production, and the fear on the technology horizon. Mark Netter, along with the cast and crew, has good source material here and though this sort of tech horror isn’t exactly novel, “Nightmare Code” is fiercely entertaining and forebodingly frightening on a low-budget, startup scale.
It's Bloggin Evil! 