Hot Picks
|
|
|
A Stranger Among the Living
USA 2020
produced by Christopher Wesley Moore for CWM Entertainment
directed by Christopher Wesley Moore
starring Jake Milton, Keni Bounds, Christopher Wesley Moore, Victoria Posey, Eric Riggs, Cheryl Abernathy, George Mayronne, Will Lovorn, Dustin Barron, Meredith Mohler, Shari Plumlee, Mandy Meyer, Samuel Reece, J.C. Patterson, Claire Mayronne, James Anderson, Courtney Middleton, Mandy Kate Myers, David Wozniak, Denise Halbach, Wayne Thomas, Ava Grady, Jess Burns
written by Christopher Wesley Moore, music by Luke Zwelsky
review by Mike Haberfelner
|
Henry (Jake Milton) has a dream which he, shall we say, doesn't enjoy
very much. It starts with him and his friends and colleagues Jessica
(Keni Bounds), Bobby (Eric Riggs) and Ginny (Cheryl Abernathy) being on a
road trip, when suddenly Ginny starts bleeding all over. They rush her to
the hospital, but the hospital looks like the school they work in, and
there are dead bodies all over ...
Later that day, at school, Henry is made aware of Mitchell (Will
Lovorn), who has put a "manifest" on the internet in which he
threatens to kill everybody - but when Henry gets into Bobby's office, who
just happens to be the prinipal, Bobby plays it down as he knows
Mitchell's parents, and Mitchell claims it was just a joke. A few days
later, Henry and Jessica have lunch when Ginny calls - and is shot dead
while on video chat with them. Turns out Mitchell wasn't joking after all,
and has taken out quite a few students and teachers, just like promised in
the manifest. And Henry and Jessica have really only escaped certain death
because they swapped shifts with Ginny and Bobby.
After this, everything changes for Henry and Jessica, not only because
of their loss, but also as because reporters are hounding them. But after
a while, they begin "seeing people", creepy people that
shouldn't be there. They chalk it up to guilt at first, and Jessica even
hauls Henry to a self-help group, where Henry actually makes a friend,
extrovert Jarvis (Christopher Wesley Moore). But eventually, these visions
turn to reality, as it seems the morgue is missing a few corpses, and then
out of the blue Jessica is attacked by her loving husband (George
Mayronne) and she has to stab him multiple times to ward him off (and kill
him). But when Henry comes to support her, the husband comes back to life
and kills her - and suddenly, Henry finds himself on the run from them
both. But since everywhere he turns to he seems to run into more dead
people walking, he soon has nowhere else to turn to ...
Now one thing up front, if you need to have your movies based on logic
and need to have everything explained away or at least a proper resolution
in the end, then this film is not for you. Actually, despite some quite
gory scenes, this is actually more of a mood piece, a film one may
interpret as an allegoric guilt trip or a nightmare with no waking up,
rather than your standard horror fare - and in that sense (though not
necessarily in style), this film has much in common with the classic Carnival
of Souls, inasmuch as both films live a life they're not supposed
to live and are caught up by the past in the end (in a very different
manner though). And a well-structured script and deliberately slow pace
with all the suspense and jump scares in the right places really help
bring this along, while a strong cast doesn't hurt one bit either of
course.
Now I might also warn you here, this is a bit of a (intentionally)
depressing movie, so don't watch if in a bad mood, it will do nothing to
lift your spirits - but that said, in the right frame of mind it's well
worth a watch!
|
|
|