In addition to directing his debut feature in 2020’s Greenlight, Graham Denman has a “story by” credit. It seems obvious then, that we are supposed to see a lot of him in the starring role of Jack, played expertly by Chase Williamson. Jack is a young man eager to break into the film industry, subsisting on the charity of his girlfriend Shantel, her parents, and his friend Sam.
Unfortunately, he’s being stymied by that hurdle so many of us trying to start our careers have faced – you need experience to get experience. Nobody will hire a greenhorn, but you can’t escape that status without someone taking a risk on you. Out of nowhere, a producer of low-rent horror/thrillers does just this for Jack, and it seems too good to be true. And it just might be.
The story is simple enough that it doesn’t get bogged down and the ending I genuinely did not see coming, but where this movie really shines is in the performances. It’s wonderful to see Caroline Williams again (Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, in which she also stars, has one of my favorite horror sequences of all time) and Chase Williamson has an easy magnetism, his charm and failing attempts to keep a grip on reality calling to mind his excellent performance in John Dies at the End. Chris Browning provides an excellent foil for him, grim and imposing in his role as the producer.
Much of the behind the camera work is impressive as well. The shot composition is solid, with fun lighting and color use. Although I would have liked a little more, the gore shots that we get are great as well. They’re not afraid to show it either; when we see the first real makeup effect, it’s shown for quite a while, and looks impressive. And I agree; why not get a long of shot of it, if you’re going to put all that work in?
The largest complaint I have, in what seems to be an unfortunate trend in my recent reviews, is that it’s almost too tight of a movie. Running 84 minutes long, things seems to happen extremely quickly. I wish we had more time to see the character spiraling especially with such a performance from Williamson. I’m happy they erred on this side of it though instead of bloating the movie, and my hunch is that budget played a role in that decision to keep it so fast-paced.
Through it all, every dollar is on the screen. This movie punches above its weight class with some excellent work on screen and off, including two leading performances that really help to elevate the movie beyond its constraints. While we’re shown how hard it can get to get a low-budget movie funded for a newcomer to the genre, in this case it was money well spent and I look forward to seeing what Denman does next.
