Movie Review - #popfan

#PopFan

2014

The Cast

*** Slight Spoilers ***

This is "Misery" for the hashtag generation.  That said, a lot of ideas and scenes were taken from the aforementioned movie.  The major one is the car crash which puts our heroine, Ava Maclain (Chelsea Kane), into the care and arms of our deluded villain, Xavier (Nolan Gerard Funk).  The other scene is the mistaken identity at the close of the movie, where Ava sees Xavier once again, though we know this cannot be true.  This is a pretty much-unneeded scene that doesn't add anything to the film.

The unoriginal story is the only drawback to this movie.  The acting of the two main leads, Kane and Funk, are pretty good and their portrayal of the characters is both strong and believable.  The other actors are above average Danny Wattley (Damon) really stood out as being as strong an actor as Kane and Funk, who did a good job as the Manager come Bodyguard. The script, on the whole, isn't too bad, though as I did say before, very Misery'ish...  No blizzard, but a nor'easter storm.  Even being set in Maine is a doff-of-the-cap to Mr King.  Though, I'm not sure if the writer, Dean Orion, was paying homage, or trying to cover his back... after all, twenty-four years have passed since Misery was filmed (Damn I feel old!)  There are, as always, strange decisions made by the heroine.  Though, to be honest, the film would've only lasted about twenty minutes is she hadn't made the strange "wrong" decisions. 

But remember this was written for television and not for the big screen or even DVD release so there are limitations the writer has to face. Director Vanessa Parise does a very good job of telling the story and interweaving the actor's portrayal's of the characters into their correct places making the film stronger than the story. Even though the story isn't great the acting and the direction lift the overall finished product. If you have a free Sunday afternoon, with not much to watch, then this is a good film to chill out too.  Not much brain power is required as you know the villain pretty much from the start, and the climax is very guessable as there are no real twists in this story.

I enjoyed the film and didn't feel disappointed after viewing so I give this a kidnapped 6.5 out of 10.