By Linda Winsh-Bolard
Teenage killers in a slasher.
Mandy Lane (Amber Heard) is the High school sex dream. Newly hot, athletic, suitably A student and determinedly not interested in sex and party, she’s got quite a wave of hormones rising.
In the opening sequence number of the usual comments, girly, catty talk, and general high school innuendo plays up to the drunken scene of the first death. Dylan (Adam Powell) is nagged by Emmet (Michael Welch) into jumping from the roof of his own house to the pool to impress the unobtainable Mandy. He lands on concrete.
Nine months later Mandy, with two other girls, Marline (Melissa Price) and Chloe (Whitney Able), accepts Red’ (Aaron Himelstein) invitation to a weekend ranch party. The boys are slobbering over the chance to get at Mandy. While Mandy remains cool to all advances, Marline disappears after sex in barn. She never returns. Among cocaine, alcohol and the overplayed whipped cream containers, the party members start to be picked up, one by one, by somebody with grudge.
No, it is not like Ten Little Indians. A secluded ranch is not mile high mountain, the phone works for a long time, they are armed, and why they do not use cells, I have no idea. They all committed the same sins of self-indulgence and there is no sermon to save them.
Nevertheless, death follows them through the night into the day.
While there is rather clear suspect since early on, there is a surprise at the end of the film. Not completely new, not exactly well executed, but there is a surprise.
The rest of the story has been well thumbed through by many other filmmakers; it follows all the expected and usual in lines of a teenage thriller.
The best thing about this film is the camera, and editing. The director uses number of close ups, not all of them flattering, nervy camera movements, overexposures and desaturated picture and changes the editing tempo often enough to make the picture visuals superior to the gist of the story.
It is the camera, angles and cuts that create the tension between the killings as well as the goriness. And that, with appropriate timing, it well done. The expectations, while always fulfilled, are there and don't exceed their time slots by descending into boring.
Mandy is, well, she is thin, long legged, blond often sporting a lock of hair over her eye. So is, minus the lock, but bitchy, Chloe. Marline is the dark one. The boys are equally thin hormone driven bores. Edwin Hodge as Bird is the male answer to Marline’s part. The dialog is predictably stunted. The acting is often borderline. Clichés all along.
There are unanswered questions: how did Mandy’s parents die? Why Garth? The whole personal development of Mandy before we meet her.
After all, everybody, except hormone ranging male, would get suspicious why would a girl who uses no drugs, doesn’t get drunk and refuses any sexual advances decide to spend a weekend with people who are her exact opposite. She knows them, so why ? It might have been more interesting had it concentrated more on those moments rather than on: "in how many ways can a teenage boy express his desire for sex?". It’s really hard to find one we haven’t heard before.
A Weinstein Co. release (in U.S.) of an Occupant Films presentation. Produced by Felipe Marino, Joe Neurauter, Chad Feehan. Executive producer, Keith Calder. Co-producer, Brian Udovich. Directed by Jonathan Levine. Screenplay, Jacob Forman, Camera: Darren Genet; editor, Josh Noyes; music, Mark Schulz;
Mandy Lane - Amber Heard
Garth - Anson Mount
Emmet - Michael Welch
Chloe - Whitney Able
Bird - Edwin Hodge
Red - Aaron Himelstein
Jake - Luke Grimes
Marlin - Melissa Price
Dylan - Adam Powell
Aunt Jo - Peyton Hayslip
Cousin Jen - Brooke Bloom
Keg Trucker - Robert Earl Keen
Running time: 90 MIN.
