• Produced, written, and directed by Ryan Cavalline
• Starring
  • Adam Berasi
  • Vic Badger
  • Pamela Sutch
  • Eddie Benevich

Ryan Cavalline’s micro-budget horror films always leave me with mixed feelings. Cavalline’s obviously a big fan of slasher flicks. I mean, a REALLY big fan. As in, every movie he makes is a slasher flick of one hue or another. And he’s obviously got more on his mind than a shallow “Hey, let’s spray some blood around!” mentality. Both this film and the last one I reviewed, Shudder, take a look at the obsessions that create and guide a serial killer. Not that the movies are retreads of each other; each approaches a different version of the concept differently, and the concept in each case is rock-solid.

A promotional consideration has been paid by…

Despite that, I usually come away from one of Cavalline’s movies with the feeling that I didn’t really watch a movie, so much as a sketch for a movie — one which kinda roughs in the areas of interest for later development. “Okay,” I say, “that looks good — now show me the real movie!”

Out protagonist, such as he is, is Michael (Adam Berasi), an incredibly surly writer who’s just sold his first, unfinished book: an in-depth profile of serial killers. That naturally puts a lot of things in his head that he’d rather not be there — like the infamous Joe the Butcher (Joel Winkoop, last seen around here in Scary Tales) describing how he killed the first of his 284 victims during sex. In a nifty low-budget mechanism, Cavalline had familiar micro-budget names like Wynkoop, Ron Ford, Ron Bonk, and several others tape their own performances from home and send them in to be edited in. The same with his wife (played by Pam Sutch of Siren Tales Productions and star of The Gosh-Darned Mortgage), seen in flashback, who left him over his heavy drinking.

Same to you, Joel.

In between Michael’s moping around and being surly to his agent (Rebecca Anderson) and his publisher (Eric Lane), we also get several scenes on another unidentified man (Vic Badger), whose pleasant cherubic demeanor is at odds with the bondage porn adorning his walls and the lesbian S&M continually playing on his TV. He’s a serial killer, and cheerfully so.

How does this relate to Michael’s story? Well, Michael’s got videotapes apparently from this killer — one of his agent trussed up in her underwear, one of his wife tied up in nothing but her panties — both telling him that someone’s pretty pissed for not being in his book. (This, by the way, is one of the major flaws of the movie, as far as storytelling goes: the tapes simply appear to be sitting around in Michael’s collection, instead of mysteriously received, and Michael shows absolutely no shock while watching them, just the tired, bemused smile he wears for most of the movie.)

“Yum — leftovers again!”

We also find out that this serial killer also has Michael’s daughter (whose existence we never even got a hint of). And while taunting Michael with that, our cherubic killer sends him a mountain of videos — all of women speaking to the camera in various states of roped-up undress, detailing how they were caught and what he’s going to do to them (seems that Cavalline canvassed every strip club in town for actresses!) Can Michael figure out who this person is and how to find him before his daughter is killed?

There’s a lot of overlooked dramatic potential here, the main instance being the main premise of the movie: How does it affect an otherwise ordinary guy to immerse himself in the world of mass murderers? Can one come to understand the serial killer’s mind without identifying with it? Unfortunately, we only meet the post-research Michael, so we never get to understand whether his personal problems are being caused by his book’s subject matter, or whether he was always a surly jackass.

“And another thing — this chair is COLD!”

Not that I think that Adam Berasi has the acting ability to pull it off. There are some commendable performances around here (Vic Badger as the baby-faced killer for one), but Berasi doesn’t seem to have the acting chops to pull off what often amounts to one person on screen, moping. (Not that he’s the worst of the lot — the police detective (Kevin Gillegpie) and the blonde jogger (Michele Feidler) are both sub-amateur — but neither of them is called upon to carry the movie.)

There’s a big twist ending, big enough that I can’t in good conscience tell you about it; I can’t even tell you what other movie it completely rips off. (The only hint I can give you: Michael does NOT discover that he’s been dead all along.)

Is she actually rolling her eyes?

Frankly, I’m heartened at Cavalline’s huge advances as a storyteller since 3 Evil Tales and Shudder. He’s managed to ingest what appears to be the gestalt of slasher-type horror movies, and find the most interesting core of the genre. I’m hoping that he either gets to the point where that interesting core gets full play on the screen, or starts collaborating with a screenwriter who can help him guarantee what what he wanted to convey on screen gets there.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 9 (plus 8 implied from the women on tape)
• breasts: 17 (plus 4 in photos)
• explosions: 0
• ominnous thunderstorms: 0
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 0