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 In the USA, the film goes more recognizably under “Closer to God,” which is a line withdrawn from the film, and while I do think “Closer to God” is a more suitable title, the gothic-like title has holds water in an off color way.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.
Tag Archives: 2016
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.
Evil Can’t Be Contained. “Captive” review!
Twelve strangers awake confused and scared in a desolated and impenetrable shed. Suspicion surrounds their bafflement as they attempt to determine the reason for their captivity and who is behind it. Suddenly, a phone rings and the testing begins. The voice on the other end of the line wants something and if the twelve captives don’t comply or fail to deliver, the secretly injected virus previously pumped into them during their unconscious state will transform them into blood thirsty, demon-like creatures and fatally strike them down within 24 hours. If they attempt to escape, they will be shot down. In addition to the already extreme situation, relentless ambient gunfire and explosions rock the world outside the shed walls. The only way out, to survive the whole ideal, is to abide by their captors rules and be the last one left alive.
The notion of the inability to escape is an anxiety-filled fear all can relate toward; in fact, many may have had the suffocating buried 6-feet under in a pine wooden box nightmare that induces shortness of breath and sweat on the brow – I know I have. Writer-director Stephen Patrick Kenny’s film “Captive” attempts to relay that fear on a grander scale with the twelve strangers trapped inside a shed at an unknown location – the equivalent to that “pine wooden box.” The scenario puts the audience in the shoes of the characters, who are also asking themselves numerous questions that race through their minds. Why am I here? Who did this to me? What’s going on? With each turn of a minute, the questions are slowly answered, whether the characters would favor the answer or not. However, the audience is acute to a little bit more information then the twelve unlucky souls. Information, such as the two men in hazard suits placing their limp bodies into the shed and from the black title cards used to formally announce the death of each character, that a type of brutish test is being conducted and that takes the audience out from the unknown and into a solely voyeuristic perspective.
Being voyeuristic should entitle all to witness the end result of the twelve players involved, but, unfortunately, we become just as clueless and lost toward the characters’ fate and the situation around them. This hybrid role of the audience, whether we’re a part of the situation or an outside party, aches and pains the logical and rational portions of the mind. In Kenny’s sophomore film, characters come and go, Houdini-like, in and out of the story without much explanation and the same can be said about their deaths. In a tail end scene, a character is alive and in the next scene, the character’s sprawled out on the floor…dead. The kill shot, the smoking gun, are omitted. A limited budget, poor editing techniques, and use of stock sound effects result in this crude determination of characters’ final destination and leave gaping holes that sour the story’s appeal.
The director’s style is visually comparable to the outer stories of a modern day video game plot without the enjoyable interactive game play. Stocked with a heavily hazy blue tint that sears into your vision, paper mache like special effects and graphics, and black title cards that act as chapters to each character’s demise path, “Captive” is more similar to a video game than a film. What’s also concerning is the lack of character development of any kind note worthy of virtue or quality. The Kenny script focuses more on the title cards rather than structuring a coherent story on the basis of solid characters and, sadly, each character is hindered from any sympathy or concern.; in fact, numerous characters quickly become dispatched within a smidgen of their awakening and if you blink, you’ll even miss their scenes. The actors, majority a cast that has had a working relationship with Kenny, don’t quite sell film as the performances are rigid and forced upon deliveries and reactions toward their hand dealt goes unnaturally and uncouth.
Even though many flaws plague Kenny’s film, I’m glad to see horror out of Ireland has not completely been forgotten. However, I’m just not seeing much heart or creativity behind “Captive” and the hopes were high going into the film after watching a vigorous trailer that displayed promising non-stop “demon” horror, suspense, and ultra-violence. None of those attributes made the final cut, I suppose, marking Stephen Patrick Kenny’s and Hoodup Film’s Sci-Fi horror-thriller “Captive” not superbly captivating.
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