Director: Paul Thompson
Stars: Olivia Stadler, Scarlett DiCaro, Allisha Pelletier, Hannah Mae Beatty, Abbas Wahab, Sam Wexler
Running time: 107 mins
Written and directed by Paul Thompson, this low budget horror is an intriguing blend of slasher movie, would-be exploitation and Hallmark-style emotional drama. It’s not entirely successful, due to some performance issues, a laughably contrived script and an unwillingness to commit to the exploitation side of things, but it’s surprisingly watchable all the same.
Olivia Stadler plays Kate, a successful porn star who receives a call telling her that the teenage daughter she gave up for adoption has been suddenly orphaned, after her parents were violently murdered in the film’s prologue. Looking for an excuse to change her life, Kate heads back to her home town and meets adoption agency manager Justine (Allisha Pelletier), who just happens to be a former classmate.
When Justine introduces Kate to her daughter Charlotte (Scarlett DiCaro), the pair get on well, and they have a stroke of luck when another former classmate, Mike (Abbas Wahab), offers to let them move into his vacated luxury mansion. However, it soon becomes clear that a masked killer is murdering people in the town, and Kate also appears to have a stalker, who is targeting her and triggering flashbacks to a dimly-remembered traumatic incident from her past.
Stadler delivers a solid performance as Kate, but she’s clearly more comfortable in the mother-daughter bonding scenes than she is in the grumpy porn star scenes. To that end, her burgeoning relationship with Charlotte is the film’s strongest element, hitting all the required emotional notes and giving the film its Hallmark quality.
Elsewhere, DiCaro is good value as Charlotte, while Pelletier is very good value as Justine, who is full of surprises. There’s also strong work from Hannah Mae Beatty and Sam Wexler as Aubrey and Corey, a pair of horny teenagers who get more than they bargained for when they decide to spy on Kate.
However, some of the supporting cast are painfully bad, to the point where you strongly suspect the director just cast their friends in the roles. The most egregious offenders are Margo Aquilina as local cop Sergeant Leadbetter and Rick Hastings as Charlotte’s adopted dad, both of whom somehow manage to misdeliver every single one of their lines.
As for the film’s kills, they are efficient and serviceable (and bloody – clearly a large amount of the SFX budget went on the red stuff), but they’re never scary or inventive. They are at least gruesome, so it’s a bit weird that the film is so hesitant when it comes to sex, when it’s clearly fine with violence.
To that end, all the porn stuff feels like a missed opportunity, exploitation-wise. Oddly, the sexiest moments are between the two horny teenagers, whose make-out scenes are very nicely blocked in suggestive fashion, without being explicit. It’s just a shame that Wexler’s character is so unlikeable.
Perhaps the most enjoyable aspect of the film is its ludicrously contrived script. The reveals in that aspect are delightfully silly, although it isn’t clear if the filmmakers intended them to be funny, and Thompson’s direction struggles with tone in that respect.
In short, despite its flaws, this is surprisingly watchable, delivering an effectively twisted take on the usually saccharine Hallmark genre. To that end, its saving grace is that it pulls off the emotional stuff, thanks to the two lead performances. Not perfect, but worth a look.
Check out more reviews at Action Reloaded
