Abstruse follows Kaiti Wallen as Amanda, a bartender whose coworker is killed by a local rich kid and senator's son (Kris Reilly) during an erotic asphyxia moment gone wrong. The police don't believe her, and it looks like someone is covering up for the senator (Haskins). As luck would have it, Wallen's father, Sizemore, is getting out of prison, and he's happy to get his daughter out of this mess and bring this kid down. But the question is, is the rich kid so far gone that he brings himself down first? And how many other people with him?
Our number one rule at the DTVC is anything over 88 minutes is borrowed time. The thing is though, it's not just our rule, it's pretty consistent among bloggers in our community. I remember talking to Jacob Gustafson, who wrote Awful Awesome Action, Vol. 1, and he talked about being scared when he sees a 100-minute runtime. Ty from Comeuppance Reviews and I discuss how sweet a nice 80-minute flick is. Even taking a sample of the external reviews of this film, whether people loved it or killed it, the common complaint either way was the length. Unfortunately this detracts from some really great stuff that I'll be discussing in the following paragraphs, like the performances or the great shots, because the story tends to get in the way of that. I don't agree with the people who killed this film, it's not a one-star or anything bad like that. It's an earnest independent project that had some really good points, and I'm going to make sure my review reflects my respect for that overall.
This begs the question, what would I have cut or how would I have done it differently? For me, this had elements that reminded me of the early 90s erotic thrillers I'd catch on cable at that time. The killing of the friend in particular really brought me back to those. In that space, maybe the thing is Kaiti Wallen's character witnesses her friend's murder--or even just suspects it if the friend goes missing--then goes to the police, and by the time they get to the killer's apartment, he's cleaned it all up, and they don't believe her. Except for grizzled veteran detective, Tom Sizemore, his gut is telling him she's telling the truth. Maybe he has an estranged daughter that Wallen reminds him of. But the thing is, even with Sizemore's help, ultimately the job of investigating falls on Wallen. She's our hero, and we could lean on her great performance and Kris Reilly's as the killer to have this tense game of cat and mouse. What happens in the film that we have though, is instead Sizemore takes over for Wallen as the hero, and to some extent Haskins and the crooked cops try to take over for Reilly as the baddies. 90 minutes; taut, tense, sexual thriller; baddie who oozes death and menace in every scene, juxtaposed by a heroine we want to root for--this formula worked well for Shannon Tweed in 1994, and with Harley Wallen's direction and Michael Kettenbeil's cinematography, this could have even exceeded what those early 90s erotic thrillers were.
Look at that shot there. You wouldn't have known that that was preceded by a lot of back-and-forth of dialog between the two that we didn't need. The shot does it all. The thing is, like Eternal Code, Harley Wallen had a message he wanted to give, about how the rich and powerful can play with the lives of those less fortunate; but also that you have Haskins, the senator, who's a horrible father and essentially leads to his son being a sociopathic killer by how poorly he raised him, but society applauds him as a great man; versus Sizemore as the felon who's a great father and raises a great daughter in Kaiti Wallen's character, but society shames him. In Eternal Code, the message made sense about the rich and powerful--that some lives are worth more than others in our society--because that was literally the movie; but here it felt grafted on and weighed the film down for me. Sometimes a shot like this is all you need.
When Kris Reilly as the baddie captures Kaiti Wallen's other friend, played by Jesi Jensen, that interplay also reminded me a lot of those old 90s erotic thrillers on cable. It was a common device: maybe the hero/heroine thinks one guy is the killer, so they hone in on them, only to discover that it's this person they were close to all along and they realize that person is with the friend! Here it wasn't like that at all though, Reilly actually threatened Jensen's character earlier on, and while the tension of him having captured her is there, it's also diminished by all the other loose ends needing to be tied up. The usual way to pull this off in a 90-minute film is have her get captured around the 70-75-minute mark, and we're able to really focus on her danger plus the heroine's race against time; but here it happens around the 90 minute mark with another half-hour to go, and we have to deal with Reilly taking care of his father, his father's fixer, and the detectives. Again, if you look at that shot below, it's tense, scary stuff, but we as the audience just don't get the chance we need to lean into it with everything else going on.
As much as I liked Tom Sizemore in this, and as much as you could really tell how good he was as an actor compared to everyone else, I do feel like it's important to give credit to Kaiti Wallen and Kris Reilly. Had this been a smaller-scale film, I think the two of them combined with Wallen's direction and Kettenbeil's cinematography could have carried it. Kris Reilly was chilling as the killer, and Kaiti Wallen was lead that you could root for. The problem is, Wallen's character isn't established well to start, it's actually the friend who's murdered, Jessika Johnson, who gets established at the beginning instead; and then she gets diminished further by the way Sizemore almost takes over the hero role. And then I think Reilly also gets diminished, because we end up with too many baddies: Haskins as his father, Cody, his father's fixer, and the crooked cops, one of which was played by Harley Wallen. Despite the fact that the roles may have been diminished though, the performances weren't, and I think it will be cool to see if Wallen goes back to them in future films.
I think it's time to wrap this up. There were some real bright moments in this, but ultimately for me, that near two-hour runtime overshadows it. Looking at it from an independent production standpoint though, I would hate for people to miss out on Harley Wallen's direction, Michael Kettenbeil's work as director of photography, and the performances by Kris Reilly and Kaiti Wallen. I think it's just always a harder ask of people in a two-hour package. I want to thank Joe Williamson again for giving me the screener for this and having me check it out, as I always appreciate the opportunity to do that!
For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6271432
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