Text © Richard Gary / Indie Horror Films, 2018
Images from the Internet
Pretty Fine Things
Written, cinematography, directed
and edited by Ryan Scott Weber
Weber Pictures Co. / Wild Eye Releasing / MVD
Visual
100 minutes, 2016 / 2017
www.wildeyereleasing.com/
While sometimes made-up
places can have decent names, or even just something like Smallville, but for
me, I’m a fan of maps. I especially love when not only are real places used –
especially rural ones – but also have great names like Bernardsville, New
Jersey. Yep, that’s where this Podunk takes place. It’s only about 45 miles
west of Hoboken, somewhere between Routes 78 and 80. I’ve passed the sign for
Bernardsville many times on my way to either Pennsylvania or back to Brooklyn,
though have never stopped off there. It’s also where this slasher release was
shot.
 |
| Lynn Lowry |
Outside this relatively
small burg is where some of the fictional Banner family resides. Papa Banner
(Ralph Cobert) is going blind and senile, missing his past-on wife (the always
amazing Lynn Lowry, in essentially an extended cameo), who we see in flashbacks
and dreams. They have three sons, and right off the bat we already know that
the one who lives with dad, Walter (Brooklyn’s own Joe Parascand), is a bit off;
I don’t think I’m giving much away as less than five minutes in he’s involved
with dispatching Heather (the very cute Krista Robelle) after she has a fight
with her boyfriend, Jay (Jesse Stier, whose face hair volume seems to changes
from scene to scene).
 |
| Joe Parascand |
After the prologue, we
meet three late-20s-looking college students from Worchester, MA: the blonde
virgin Hayden (Emelia Brawn) who gets constantly teased by her friends, Wendy
the redhead (Lauren Renahan), and Ashley the Latina brunette (also cute Camila
Perez). They rent a house from Walter to have a Halloween party. The many
guests – aka, the body count – arrive, as do Walter’s two equally serial
killing and mother-obsessed brothers, Thomas (Patrick Devaney) and James (Adam
Ginsberg), who are they to create the
body count. Their aim is to delete
sinners from the world, and have women to “substitute” for mommy dearest to dear
old senile and near blind dad.
Added to the mix are
two police detectives investigating the recent string of missing women, Jake
(director Weber) and his partner/love-interest Jennifer (Kristin Accardi), and
their Captain (Christopher J. Murphy), who for some reason looks more Texan
than Jerseyite, right down to the Stetson…and yet has a map of Italy on his
wall (I’m sure it belongs to whosever space they were using).
 |
| Ryan Scott Weber |
This is just the basic
set up. As you can see, there are a lot of
elements going on at the same time in this very ambitious screenplay. The story
jumps around each of the three groups – the Banner family, the women/party, and
the police – in quick order, circling around until they all collide together. While
all of this is going on, we get to know a little back-story, which is welcomed
and tends to be missing from most films, so thanks for that!
Being the modern world,
most of these kinds of films that involve the slaughter of many (some men,
mostly women), you know there has to be a twist, and is partially indicated
early on when one of the women comments on the weirdness of Walter, and the
response from another is, “We are a little creepy, ourselves.” While this is
more than just a subtle reference to a line from The Craft, it is potentially a good thing. But also like
contemporary horror cinema, especially indie releases, the action takes quite a
while to start. There is some minor bloodletting to whet the appetite, but the
real action kicks in after the expository about an hour in, when the Halloween
party begins.
 |
| Camila Perez |
Which brings us to the
gore: we don’t see much in the first hour, even with some killings, but when
the party starts is when it really kicks off. Michael Anthony Scardillo does a
bang-up job with it, nearly all appliance SFX, when we see it. What I mean is
that a lot of the violence to bodies is done through clothing, such as
stabbings, but every once in a while, we get to see some viscera and
bloodletting, and it looks really good. As for nudity? Well, we get to see a
lot of cleavage and bras, but no naughty
bits, even with a shower scene (still in underwear). Well, the cast is
attractive, so I’ll move on after the following comment: there are a lot of tattoos on nearly everybody,
including at least one full chest-plate. “Ouchies!”
The weak sides of the
film are as follows: there really needs to be some editing done to bring this
puppy down to at most 90 minutes. There are definitely superfluous moments that
could be done away with without losing any of the story (I’ll get to the actual
“Deleted Scenes” extra in a mo). Most of the acting is quite decent, such as by
Parascand who steals nearly every scene he is in (his close-mouth smile is just
the right level of eerie), and Perez is a close second, though there are some
characters that are pretty wooden and only there for the body count (in the
party scene, so it’s actually a positive, right?). Lastly, the writing is a bit
shaky in sporadic parts, though I will say there is a nice and subtle humor
that shows up throughout here and there, especially with the coppers, to
balance it all out.
 |
| Lauren Renahan and Emieia Brawn |
On the positive, I was mucho grande impressed that there were
at least three unexpected twists in
the last 20 minutes, which I’m not going to hint at in any way. There is also
an interesting use of color tinting throughout, which isn’t as subtle as it
could have been, but still works. The camerawork is also quite good, using
unusual angles and through objects in a way that doesn’t come across as all
artsy, but still stands out.
The extras include a
10:05 blooper reel that was okay, but did not really bring anything major to
the cast to indicate friendship or amusement to the viewer (well, this one
anyway). The three female leads are friends in real life, but you don’t really
get that here. But blooper reels tend
to be overrated, in my opinion. Next is a 27:28 “Behind the Scenes” collection
that is narrated by Jay Kay, host of “The Horror Happens Radio Show.” Rather than
just watching shots being set up (which I find boring), Kay wisely interviews
the seven key players, and some of the production crew. It’s a bit long, but
most of it is interesting. The cheesy music behind it gets to be a bit much,
but I think I’m nit-picking there.
This is followed by a
9:44 “Deleted Scenes” which also includes some extended ones, and an
interesting alternative ending. In all, I feel like they made the right choice
to put these here, rather than leave them in the film. Still, it was good to
see these after watching the film. Of course, being a Wild Eye Releasing – err –
release, there are a half-dozen trailers for other indies, mostly with a theme
that I won’t say as it sheds a light on a spoiler alert. I really like Wild Eye’s
stuff.
The main extra, which
comes first but I saved for last (in both review and participating in) is the
full-length commentary. Thankfully, it’s only Weber and Parascand so there is
hardly any talking over or bravado, just stories about filming, both about the
ideas behind it and anecdotes about the shoot, and it’s an easy listen that doesn’t
get boring.
This is essentially a
story about playing with the perception of who is “good” and who is “bad.” You can
tell this is an mico-budgeter, but Weber does a great job in showing what can
be done with very little, and make it look big.
No comments:
Post a Comment