Quite A Trying Movie
Enrico Clerico Nasino is a first time director, who had previously worked on the acclaimed The International (2009) as Second Unit Director, but has he bitten off more than he can chew? Mmm. I strongly believe he has, but I can understand why it would be thought that a script such as this could have been handled by an inexperienced director. I think your average person is under the mistaken belief that if there is little going on in a movie, then it should be easy to do. Nothing could be further from the truth!
Basically, we have an adult couple, who are about to get married after a down-on-one-knee proposal by Jack (John Brotherton) to Dana (Clare Carey). Before we see any ceremony, the couple wake up in separate cell like rooms, and both are disorientated and totally confused as to how they even got there in the first place. On one wall, each of them have a couple of buttons to press, also something above the buttons that looks suspiciously like a car stereo, built into the wall panel, which also reads out questions. The buttons are marked with a ‘Y‘ and ‘N‘, and must be pushed after each question, or they are gassed, among other things. The questions are exactly the type of thing one would expect to see, like “Do you trust your husband?,” and the like. They are also forced to watch boring as hell video footage, of the guilty party doing the deed, but the thing is, none of it is exactly earth shattering, or even remotely interesting, and none of the so called bad things were much at all.
I thought this movie was really, a waste of time, and I don’t like my time being wasted, as I’m sure you are also the same. As soon as they woke up in their prison, the first movie I thought of was Exam (2009), but Exam happens to be a good flick. It also had more than a passing resemblance to a cross between, Saw, and Phone Booth, as the story is the same in context to the excellent Phone Booth, but the fact they were snatched from somewhere else, then tossed in a locked room, screams Saw. If you are in the mood for this type of low budget indie than have at it, just be prepared with plenty of patience, and a crossword.
Grade: D+ (4/10)
Review by E. Blackadder, special to Influx Magazine
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