“Shot with energy and verve, Coin offers nothing else to cash in on to make it worthy of even the most desperate viewer.”
I truly love to give the benefit of the doubt when it comes to budget constraints. I’ve certainly seen my share of films throughout the years that have made silk purses out of sow’s ears. And while there’s a certain level of enthusiasm buried within “Coin,” it’s really difficult to find anything of merit beyond.
Coin is an apparent attempt at anthology horror, but it feels more like an excuse to string together a few horror shorts the director has worked on over time. It claims to deal with the subject of shitty parenting, which it does, but the thread that ties them together is thin and frayed at best. It becomes all the more exposed as the amount of poor sound design, bad editing, strained acting and really poor writing begins to dogpile on the picture.
- Coin
- Written & Directed by
Michael Fredianelli - Cast
Michael Nosé, Joseph Naegele, Tara Tinsley - Release Date
2014 - Rob’s Grade: D
Coin begins with a creepy clown who is featured in a poorly animated TV show. As bad as the show’s graphics are, it is perhaps one of the highlights of Coin. In it, a Joker-like harlequin goads a bullied-upon child to get revenge on his teen oppressors by flipping a coin in a well. This trenchcoated clown does not appear until the film’s final moments, and as weak as it may be, it seems as though it’s the only narrative link this film seems to have. He predicts, in “Monkey’s Paw” fashion, “Be careful what you wish for,” but this trope does not play out in the vignettes that follow.
They are as follows: a young chick doesn’t want to be bothered by her son who’s living with grandma. She apparently has body-image issues, so, logically, all her stuffed dolls come to life and force her to kill herself (?!). It does not play out nearly as deliciously deranged as that sounds. We are treated to an entire sequence of her just sitting around her house, chatting on the phone, eating and puking in the potty. The next segment features a bunch of homies who decide to go hunting and camping, led by an insufferable ass-hat who brags about his skills with the ladies. The group gets offed one by one while taking a dump (which, come to think of it, toilets and bodily functions play a much larger plot device in the film than anything else), except for Mr. Ladies Man. He finds a baby in the woods, takes it to his car, then is approached by a man with a sheet over his head.
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I’m not leaving anything out of this story for you to be surprised by if you choose to watch it. That is literally the last scene of this particular segment. Who was it? Why a bedsheet? Ultimately, who cares?
The final two segments deal with a homeless family in which the daughter is possessed by the spirit of her dead brother… or something. It was at this point I questioned if I was watching some really shitty religious “thriller” that was trying to take on an anti-abortion message or something, and I have to admit, I really didn’t bother to search for any other reason. It’s not because I was lazy, but rather there was nothing within that engaged me as a viewer to cause me to press on.
The final segment is perhaps the most entertaining, if only by the sheer value of its over-the-top nuttiness. A large Hispanic gent wants his skinny friend to look after his child (who, it should be noted in this film’s scatalogical obsession, “Shits in the toilet like a man!”). It slips into some over-the-top conclusion that is the weakest of connections, but does welcome back the clown, if only to get the snot knocked out of him.
Shot with energy and verve, Coin offers nothing else to cash in on to make it worthy of even the most desperate viewer.
Review by Lead Entertainment Writer and Film Critic, Rob Rector
