Boss Level (2021)

A few weeks ago I had Brett and Ty from Comeuppance on the podcast to discuss the great Robert Ginty, and on that episode Brett mentioned seeing this, and said it wasn't a bad deal. Since I thought I'd never done any Frank Grillo on the site before, and because it's Memorial Day weekend, I figured why not fire up the Grillo and make it happen? It looks like there are over 100 critic reviews of this on IMDb, so there's a good chance a friend of the site has done this too, but I may have missed it in my initial scan.

Boss Level has Frank Grillo as a former special forces soldier who's currently in a time loop where he's forced to relive the same day over and over. At the same time, a group of assassins are out to get him every time he wakes up. Why is this happening? How can Grillo get out of it? The answer may be in his ex's (Naomi Watts) science project, which she's working on for a boss who's not only evil, but also played by a raging anti-Semite and racist. So Grillo has to keep living the same day, gathering clues along the way, hoping to finally solve the puzzle and break out of this horrible Groundhog's Day scenario. It's like a real life video game--except in a movie, which isn't real life...

 

This is really good for about the first hour or so. It has all the elements we want out of a modern actioner: great fights, great car chases, and a great hero in the lead. And then at around that hour mark, our hero seems to have figured it out and wins, only to discover he hasn't, and another 30 minutes is tacked onto it. It's a fascinating trend I've been seeing in a lot of new action movies, what I call the "enough for a 43-minute syndicated TV show" effect. This could have been a great episode of Time Trax or Cobra, or even Arrow or The Flash, but the need to push it to 90 minutes is where we lose it. I can't explain too much of what happens without giving it away, but essentially, if you're following the slider bar when you're watching, at around 55 minutes or so, the film seems to hit a natural conclusion, only to be told it doesn't. By the same token, issues aside, when we're talking about big action that's not tied to any billion-dollar franchise, this is a good start, and I feel like it can still be a fun way to kill 90 minutes.

As I mentioned above, I thought this was our first Frank Grillo film on the site, but it turns out that's not the case, he was also in the Bruce Willis film Lay the Favorite. Either way, this definitely won't be our last. He's fantastic here in the lead, between the action and his natural charisma. According to IMDb, he was born in 1965, so this puts him right around the Gary Daniels/Mark Dacascos age for an action star; also, he has a ton of other stuff we could do, so we can make up for the lost time of us having left him out before. This film has some other big names in it, like Naomi Watts, and I think the true test of whether or not someone has "It", is whether or not they still have the presence onscreen to carry every scene they're in no matter who they're acting opposite, and Grillo definitely has that. Now that the summer is here, I think we'll be firing up the Grillo a lot more.

 

Among the other characters, I really liked Selina Lo as Guan Yin. Every time she killed someone, she said "I am Guan Yin, and Guan Yin has done this." The problem I think is that we had a bunch of other characters like hers that weren't anywhere near as developed, so we were left with a lot of starts that weren't finished. I don't know how you fix that when you only have 90 minutes, but maybe what it is is you shrink the pool of assassins--or what if, from a sci-fi angle, they're all Guan Yins? They just clone hundreds of her. I guess then you'd run into budgetary concerns if Grillo has to fight two or more at once. Either way, for one of the few characters that were fully developed, I think it was a good decision to spotlight Lo's, because she did really well with it.

One thing this movie does, whether intentionally or not, is it delves into the macabre element of video games where you have multiple lives. Dying a violent death is not fun, but Grillo's character experiences it 200 times or so. Talk about PTSD, how do you recover from that? The idea I guess is that Grillo's character is so mentally tough that he can handle it, but we never think when we're playing, say, Ninja Gaiden, what it would be like if the character actually experienced every death on the way to winning the game. It's a huge departure too from the standard action movie, where the hero at worst gets a flesh wound on the shoulder or leg, and ultimately takes down all the baddies and survives. Imagine if every video game adaptation did what this movie does? It would fun be to watch a Ninja Gaiden live action film where Ryu dies and comes back to life.

 

Finally, anyone who's been rockin' with the DTVC for sometime knows that I'm from New England, which means I'm a huge fan of the team everyone loves to hate, the Patriots. Seeing Gronk in this was perfect as a Pats fanboy, even if he left the Patriots to join the Buccaneers and won a Super Bowl with them this past season. It wasn't Gronk's fault, anymore than it was Brady's, that Belichick drove him out of town. What hurts more as a Pats fan is that they didn't win more here. Look at everything the Pats spent for the 2021 season. Couldn't they have spent a little of that in 2019 to get Brady over the hump so they at least win that last game of the year against Miami and secure the first round bye? Once they got that bye they could have cruised to another Super Bowl, and maybe Brady doesn't leave in 2020. Sorry, I know people who root for teams that haven't ever won don't want to hear me complain that the Pats didn't get a seventh.

And with that, it's time to wrap this up. Beyond the tacked on last 30 minutes, this movie isn't horrible. If anything, it's a great showcase for what Frank Grillo can do, and I'm excited to fire up the Grillo more in the future. As of this writing, you can stream this on Hulu, which I think isn't a bad deal. Full disclaimer though: as I mentioned above, the villain is played by a real life raging anti-Semite and racist. The fact that I'm reviewing this and to some extent recommending it is in no way an endorsement of him. In my mind the movie works in spite of him, not because of him.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7638348

And if you haven't yet, check out my novel, Chad in Accounting, in paperback or on Kindle!

Double Identity (2009)

A little while back I was a guest on KilmerKast with Francis Rizzo III to discuss this movie. If you're not familiar with it, KilmerKast is a podcast dedicated to looking at the films of the great Val Kilmer, but also has some other really fun segments, like looking back on the films, TV, and music that were popular when the film in question came out, and then games with the guest, like the one I did where Francis translated Kilmer titles into Swedish, and then had me guess if what he was saying was a Kilmer film title, or an IKEA item. It was a lot of fun, and a podcast everyone should check out if they haven't already.

Double Identity has Val Kilmer as a doctor in Bulgaria doing charity work who is mistaken for a British secret agent that's trying to keep an Eastern European crime boss from selling diamonds on the black market--or something like that. As most Hitchcockian thrillers are wont to do, we have a mysterious beautiful woman in Izabella Miko who is either there to help, or there to get poor Kilmer in deeper. Will our hapless hero be a little less hapless and extricate himself out of this dangerous circumstance?

 

This movie looks, feels, and smells like your standard 2000s era Eastern European shot DTV flick with a once big star in the lead. The reality is it could have been anyone playing this part, Kilmer, Christian Slater, Cuba Gooding Jr., etc., but the fact that it's Kilmer added a level of Kilmer-ness to it that makes it a bit more fun in my opinion. That being said, there isn't anything all that remarkable about this that makes it any more than just the standard 2000s era Eastern European shot DTV flick with a once big star in the lead. There were a few one-off scenes that felt really inspired, which is something you don't usually get from a film of this ilk, but there were just as many scenes where you're like "that felt a bit convenient/lazy/absurd." I'm not a fan of the expression "it is what it is," but this movie was what it was, either for good or for bad.

We're now at 10 Kilmer films on the site, which puts him one ahead of Christian Slater, and one behind Cuba Gooding Jr., two former big screen stars that I think are the best Kilmer comps. If you look at his IMDb bio, he did a bunch in this late 2000s/early 2010s period, and then moved on to more smaller parts in big screen films, TV roles, and indie projects. The thing is, most of them are like this one, with only a few things here or there to distinguish it from the others. I think that's why I've kind of left his stuff alone for so long--this is our first Kilmer film since we did 7 Below in October of 2013. That doesn't mean I'm not a huge fan of Kilmer's, I am, and I think seeing him here in the film was one of the bright spots; but with so many movies out there to review, "bright spots" aren't enough to push more of these above some of the newer stuff out there, or the tons of 80s and 90s stuff we still haven't reviewed yet.

 

When I was on KilmerKast, one of the things we talked about was how many of these DTV films were made at this time that had the same look and feel. Whether it was Sofia, Bulgaria, or Bucharest, Romania, whether it was a low-budget actioner film or a suspense yarn like this was, there was this mass-produced feel to it, kind of like the modern-day Brill Building approach to pop music where it all sounds the same. It had a cynicism to it that this film felt like it was dripping with, even when there were some truly inspired scenes or plot devices that I really liked. Shoot it in 10 days, slap a big name on the cover, add in a pretty Eastern European co-star, and get it on the video store shelves, which at that time were also mostly big chains that were looking for DVDs for people who missed out on renting one of the 30 copies of the new Transformers movie they had. That ecosystem also helped birth The Asylum, and now that all the video stores are shuttered and people are actually remembering Blockbuster with rose-tinted glasses, the Asylum is still marching on, but to some extent these Eastern European shot movies have been replaced, post-2008 financial crisis, by even quicker and cheaper shot films in places like Michigan or Louisiana. The thing has gone even more cynical in ten years, which makes me wonder what it'll look like in 2031.

Izabella Miko plays the pretty Eastern European co-star, which does sound a bit dismissive, since she's had a bigger career here in the States, but I think that gets back to the cynicism I talked about above. It's not that she's just any pretty Eastern European actress, but the film makes it feel that way. The same way that any number of stars could have played Kilmer's part, the fact that Miko brings a better acting pedigree to the proceedings isn't a value-add with the assembly-line vibe of the movie. I don't know if this were made on a bigger budget with a longer shooting schedule if the same pairing of Kilmer and Miko could have given us the kind of TNT New Classic suspense actioner that made a lot of money in the box office in the late 90s/early 2000s though either. Honestly I don't know how good any of those were, including something like The Saint that Kilmer was in, but they worked for a certain audience, and I guess that brings us back to the cynicism: make this on the cheap and hope to tap into that audience on a smaller scale.

 

Finally, this film is supposed to take place in 1992, which next year will be 30 years ago. I've noticed this trend online of people freaking out about how long ago the 90s are, and making comparisons with how long ago the 90s were from the 60s or 70s. Like "This year we'll be as far from when The Phantom Menace came out as The Phantom Menace was from when the original Star Wars came out." It's as if people our age were the first people to ever be old. Or is it a social media phenomenon. I mean, would someone born in the 1890s have posted in the 1940s "we're as far from 1900 as 1900 was from the start of the Civil War"? Or maybe someone my grandfather's age, being like "we're as far now from WWII as WWII was from the Civil War." And then all the comments, "Dude," "mind blown," "I'm going to go have a good cry"... okay, I made that last one up, but I like it better than "literally crying".

And with that, let's wrap this one up. You can stream this on Tubi as of this writing, and I think that's the best bet. For my money, it's really only for Kilmer completists, otherwise it's unfortunately too unremarkable. Speaking of Kilmer completists, remember to check out KilmerKast, it's a really fun time, and thank you again to Francis for having me on!

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1290400

And if you haven't yet, check out my novel, Chad in Accounting, in paperback or on Kindle!

The Fighter aka The Kick Fighter (1989)

Back in January I was on the Comeuppance Reviews podcast with Brett and Ty to discuss the great Richard Norton, and this was one I hadn't seen yet that I watched beforehand. If you haven't checked out that episode, you definitely should--in addition to all the other great episodes of the Comeuppance Reviews podcast. The fact that you're hear reading this review tells me you'd really enjoy it. Also, in addition to us, Ty and Brett have also reviewed this film for their site.

The Fighter has DTVC Hall of Famer Richard Norton as Ryan Travers, a kid who's framed for murder and spends five years in jail. At the same time, his parents, who thought it would be a good idea to move their family to Thailand and open a shop, get killed by a local mob boss. When Norton gets out of jail, he would like to take him and his sister back to San Francisco, but they need money, so he gets work as a longshoreman, and discovers he has a knack for underground fighting to make extra cash. That's when a fight manager takes him under his wing, and gets him into the real fight game, where he has a bout with undefeated Benny Urquidez. If only it were that simple, right? The old mob boss is back to make it tougher on Norton, and now he has to beat both the mob and Urquidez. The lesson? Don't move your family to Thailand.

 

This is a fun deal. It hits all the late 80s action notes you want. Norton delivers in all the ways need him to, so much so that I'm good with him being an American with an Australian accent. We don't know why he knows martial arts, and we don't care, we just want to see him in a Canadian tuxedo roundhousing stuntmen. Word on the street (or word from Ty and Brett) is in the early scenes when he's supposed to be a kid, Norton is playing a nine-year-old. If that's the case, that is too amazing for words, and the fact that Norton just went with it is even better. People were getting on Scorsese for not casting someone like Miles Teller as a young De Niro in The Irishman, but obviously he was just taking a page from fellow filmmaking luminary Anthony Maharaj. 

We're now at 22 films for DTVC Hall of Famer Richard Norton, which seems like a lot, but really we have a long way to go with his filmography, and a film like this is just a start to get us caught up. In that late 80s/early 90s period that we love so much, he was one of the best, and the podcast episode I did with Brett and Ty was meant to spotlight that, and I think I'm going to try to do more of it on the site here as well. I think the thing is, I fell behind on a lot of Dolph and Seagal stuff while I was on hiatus, plus Scott Adkins is putting out 5 movies a year, so someone like Norton gets lost in the shuffle; but the reality is, I think his work from this era is consistently more enjoyable than some of what Dolph, Seagal, and Adkins are putting out now, just due to the realities of what movie making is today. For my personal tastes, I'd take the Pepsi Challenge with this up against an Acceleration, Beyond the Law, or Legacy of Lies any day, and as a result, maybe I should reconsider my priorities.

 

This is actually the first Anthony Maharaj directed piece I've done on here, which is a major oversight on my part (we have done Future Hunters, which he produced). Norton was something of a mainstay for him, so the fact that I haven't despite doing over 20 Norton films is a bit of surprise. I think one reason for that is I haven't done many Norton vehicles like this one, they're usually films where Norton plays a supporting part. My understanding of Maharaj is he had a bit of a Godfrey Ho or Leo Fong sensibility in making films, and this one in particular may have been a mix of a few different films, which gives us the cinematic brilliance of Norton playing a nine-year-old at the age of 39. Like we said, just go with it.

AIP distributed this film on VHS in the States, which may explain the alternate title The Kick Fighter, as AIP was trying to turn the idea of "kick fighting" into a phenomenon. It's a shame it didn't work, because I would have loved a 2020s Kick Fighting reboot movie in an attempt to create a new franchise to compete with modern comic book movies. This is now the seventh AIP film on the site, which still has them well behind Cannon, PM, and The Asylum as far as DTV movie houses go. For a while, a lot of their catalog was on Prime, but I didn't get around to them, and by the time I did, Prime dumped them all. Classic Prime, trying to out Netflix Netflix.

 

Finally, the end credits tell us that Benny Urquidez was undefeated as a professional fighter, just in case we thought maybe he wasn't that great after he lost a scripted cinematic fight to Richard Norton, who was also playing a character. I guess if you're Benny Urquidez or anyone else who fought for a living, it matters to you who you can take and who you can't take in a fight--and maybe Urquidez didn't even ask for that credit in the film--, but for me, I couldn't care less. When I see a fight scene in a film between two great fighters, for me it's about the art of them staging the fight for us that counts. On that score, I think Norton and Urquidez had a pretty good final battle, one that they both can be proud of, and I don't think any less of Urquidez as a fighter because his character ultimately lost. 

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of this writing, you can catch this on YouTube. Tubi should have the entire AIP catalog by now, but since they don't, YouTube is a pretty good bet. And again, if you haven't yet, you need to check out the Comeuppance Reviews podcast. I get it on iTunes, but it's on your other favorite podcatchers as well.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093022

And if you haven't yet, check out my novel, Chad in Accounting, in paperback or on Kindle!

Fast and Fierce: Death Race (2020)

Back in October The Asylum was inducted into the DTVC Hall of Fame, and I meant to do a post then to commemorate that. Unfortunately I ran into some issues and went on a mini-hiatus, and then had to go back and catch up on those Hall of Fame posts I didn't get a chance to do. On top of that, I needed to find a film I wanted to review of theirs for the occasion. There's a ton out there, but when I saw this was available on Showtime On Demand, I figured it was the right choice, especially after DMX's tragic passing recently. 

Fast and Fierce: Death Race is about a former professional racer named Jack Tyson (Michael DeVorzon) whose brother Nelson (Nelson Tyson?) (Jack Person) is in deep to a crime lord (DMX). His only way out of the debt? Jack needs to race in DMX's underground Mexico to LA competition and win. As always though, things aren't that simple. First, DMX's ex (Paulina Nguyen) has stolen two flash drives that have all the evidence of his criminal operation, and she's jumped into Jack's car; and second, the Mexican cartels have taken DMX, and his crew needs to rescue him. How will Jack maneuver his way out of this one?

 

Where do I go with this? It's not the Asylum's worst, but not their best either. I like DMX better here than Beyond the Law, but we still lose him for a good chunk of the middle of the movie. Michael DeVorzon was a solid enough lead, which helps, especially with DMX MIA. The problem is the problem most Asylum films have: they try to bang it out on the cheap, and often that means you get what you pay for. First off, Jack is only racing against two other people. What kind of race is that that only has two other cars? I grew up on Wacky Races, we need more than three contestants, but if you're doing it on the cheap, that's all you can afford. From there, when DMX goes MIA, he's replaced by his hench-person, played by Veronika Issa, who's good, but she's not DMX good. Part of me wonders why they even did that, because it's not like they couldn't have just shot a bunch of scenes of DMX reacting to things and looped them throughout the movie, especially since she was doing everything from one location too. Finally, with the short runtime (which I love!), they needed to make up for the areas where the plot dragged at points, so the end was one of those put on some eye protection as the loose ends fly together kind of deals. Just the same, it had its fun moments, and I think it gave us the Asylum mockumentary we were looking for.

In true Asylum fashion, you could say they forced us to put them in the Hall of Fame, because they were the only entity on the site--actor, director, studio, etc.--with 30 tags or more that wasn't in the Hall of Fame. I had two Sharknados in the can, parts 4 and 5, that I could have used for this post, but I decided against it, because when I did 3 during my Shark Week last summer, barely anyone read it. As much fun as Sharknado was, The Asylum couldn't get enough blood out of that stone, to the point people were sick of it. I think one could make a similar case for these Mockbusters, but when they have people like DMX in them, it's hard to say no; plus, Android Cop with Michael Jai White was one that I really liked. I think when these Mockbusters work, they're a lot of fun; and when they don't, there's almost a sense that The Asylum got one over on us, and I tell myself I won't be duped again, until I am. Here's to you Asylum, if anyone earned a spot in the Hall of Fame, it's you.

 

When I reviewed The Patriot, I included a comment on DMX after his passing, but when I saw that this Asylum film with him in it was available, I had to take the opportunity to give him a further spotlight. When you think of it, the same way Michael Jai White should have been RoboCop in the reboot as opposed to being in the Mockbuster, DMX should have been in the actual Fast and Furious movies too. Seeing him in this is a reminder of that, he would have been at home in scenes with Vin Diesel, Jason Statham, and the Rock. He was truly larger than life, and I think that comes across in this, to the point that when he's not onscreen, there's a void felt that lead Michael DeVorzon couldn't quite fill. The other thing was how this film and Beyond the Law felt like a pivot in his career, and had he not passed, I think he could have put up a Hall of Fame DTV career of his own. Really one of the all-time greats, and someone who will be missed.

It's easy to crush The Asylum and their Mockbusters, but over time in watching a lot of them, I've grown to appreciate the earnestness with which a lot of the casts in their films approach their roles. I don't know what the mindset is when an actor is told by their agent that they're up for a part in Fast and Fierce: Death Race instead of Fast and Furious 9, but to not mail it in is statement in and of itself. For example, Nate Walker plays Mick, the heel. I think you really have to be a professional to not only take a role in a movie like this, but agree to be a character that's so unlikable. Or Paulina Nguyen and Becca Buckalew's parts, they could just be any female leads that look good in leather pants, which for this film would have been enough, but instead they, and a lot of the other actors in the cast, look at this as more of an opportunity to show what they can do. Maybe one day they'll all make it--whatever "making it" looks like to them--and while they're on a press junket for that "made it" project, they can have fun with the guy from Access Hollywood as they talk about that Asylum film they did.

 

Finally, when The Asylum first started making movies, they had what they called a "temporal refund disclaimer," saying that anyone who complains that they want the time back that they lost in watching an Asylum movie unfortunately is out of luck. In my mind, I thought that ended the whole "that's 90 minutes I'll never get back" commentary on The Asylum's movies, but when I browsed the IMDb user reviews, there they were, people giving one star and requesting temporal refunds. As someone who's done 30+ of these--and will probably do another 30 more before I'm done--I can safely say you're not getting that time back, so the best thing you can do is create a blog and try to make something creative out of it. Blogger and WordPress are free, and I'm happy to give any advice if you shoot me an email. Make lemonade out of lemons, that's what I always say--or in my case, lemon water, which is fine too.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of this writing, this is available on Showtime On Demand and Hoopla, so if you don't have Showtime as part of your cable package, in the US Hoopla is the way to go, because I think this is more of a free stream than it is something worth renting. Hopefully it'll join all of its Asylum siblings on Tubi soon too. Also, congratulations to The Asylum for their spot in the Hall of Fame. Next stop for you is the 40 Club and beyond--and we have plenty of Mockbusters out there to keep that tag count rising.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11765324

And if you haven't yet, check out my novel, Chad in Accounting, in paperback or on Kindle!

Welcome to Willits (2016)

This was one of the myriad Dolph films that came out while I was on hiatus between 2015 and 2019. I caught it on Netflix around the time I started the blog again, and planned to review it, but Netflix dumped it before I could get any images for it. I put it aside and reviewed some other Dolph films in the meantime, and finally, almost two years later, Prime picked it up, so I figured I'd grab some images and get the review in before they dumped it too.

Welcome to Willits is about a couple (Bill Sage and Sabina Gadeki) who grow pot out in the woods of California. They're either being visited by aliens who do gruesome experiments on people, or the drugs they're doing make them think they are. On top of that, the husband thinks the character Dolph Lundgren plays on a cop show is talking to him through the TV and giving him advice on how to deal them. Enter their visiting cousin Courtney (Anastasia Baranova) and a group of campers who stumble upon their weed garden, and you have what we in the biz call a collision course to wackiness. Will Courtney discover in time that her relatives believe they're seeing aliens? What about our adventurous camping crew?

 

This was a lot of fun. All the right combinations of scary, gory, and humorous, which is not an easy combination to pull off. Either the humor is too goofy, the gore too over the top, or the scares too out of place to fit in with the humor; but this one made it all work. A big part of that was the performance by Bill Sage. He made the goofy plenty goofy, yet could turn around and make the scary just as scary. And then his wife, played by Sabina Gadeki, does the same thing, only not as much as Sage, which adds intrigue, because we wonder if she's going to be sympathetic or keep following Sage. Then we tie the thing together with Anastasia Baranova, who's thrust into this "final girl" role where her character is as much trying to make sense of the situation as she's trying to survive it, which puts the whole comedy/horror tone that the film is going for in its proper perspective. Everything, from a writing, directing, and cast standpoint, the whole thing works. 

We're at number 59 for Dolph, one away from him entering the 60 Club all by himself. This isn't so much a starring role for him, but the parts he's in were fantastic. I'll be honest, if I wasn't a Dolph completist, I probably wouldn't have watched this movie, considering all the films I need to cover on here, and considering how much I liked this, that would have been too bad. It does show though how much having a name like his on the cover can help sell a film: but from there, what do the filmmakers do with it? This didn't feel like a bait-and-switch, it felt like a movie that had a lot going for it that was lucky enough to have someone of Dolph's level play the part he did. When I look at Dolph's 2016, we have this, Female Fight Squad, Don't Kill It, and Kindergarten Cop 2 (also a blink and you'll miss it uncredited part in Hail, Caesar!), and of those, this and Female Fight Squad have him in smaller parts, while Don't Kill It and Kindergarten Cop 2 have him in the lead. I wasn't as huge a fan of Kindergarten Cop 2, but I think the other three weren't bad, so 2016 was a pretty good year for him. Next time we see Dolph here, he'll be the inaugural member the 60 Club.

 

As I mentioned above, Bill Sage was the real star of this, and his performance anchors the entire vibe the film was going for. We've seen him one other time here at the DTVC, in the film We Are What We Are, which was another unique horror film, but not anything like this one. In terms of Sage, one difference in that film was he had veteran character actor Michael Parks to co-anchor the film with him, while here it was really on him: if Sage doesn't play his part as well as he does, the whole thing doesn't work, no matter how great everyone else involved was. For him not only to pull it off, but pull it off as well as he did, was great to see. Maybe I should be picking out more films that have his name on the tin the way I do ones with Dolph's.

From there, there were a lot of other great performances--including Rory Culkin as the creepy drifter the gang of campers pick up along the way--but as I mentioned above, Sabina Gadeki and Anastasia Baranova were the two other standouts for me. With Gadeki, we don't know if she wants to break away from Sage, or if she's just as bad off as he is, which adds a level of suspense to the proceedings that I think we needed without knowing we needed it. And then Baranova is this character who's almost coming from another movie, and is thrust into this Final Girl construct, and there's a feeling that her character is as much trying to make sense of it as she is trying to survive it. I don't know if that was the intent from how the character was written, or just how Baranova played it, but it was an element that helped take the film further beyond the standard horror film.

 

Finally, as I mentioned above, I was delayed in getting this reviewed due to Netflix dumping it and having to wait for it to come up on another streaming service to get images. In some cases, I make do by grabbing the images from the trailer, but that's not easy considering how quickly they're edited, and how limiting it is as far as what I can choose from in the film. Another Dolph flick from 2016, Kindergarten Cop 2, is one I've missed twice: I saw it on Netflix, never got the images before it was dumped, then recently it was added to Peacock, and I didn't get around to getting them on there before they dumped it too. I'm not sure why these streaming sites dump films so often. I get in some cases they lose the rights or lose a deal with the company distributing the film--like we saw in the early days of Netflix Instant with Stars Play ending their deal with them and me having to scramble to watch 11 movies that were about to be taken down, forever immortalized on the site with the tag "Stars Play 11"--but often it just feels like they add things and take them down at will. Netflix might be the greatest offender, but I go into my Prime queue to see a bunch of films no longer available, and now with a new player like Peacock doing it so soon, I think that's a bad sign for them. Either way, us in the movie blogging world--and movie fans in general--feel like we're dealing with a guy playing a shell game on the Broad Street line here in Philadelphia: where's the movie? Is it under that shell? Nope, you lose, we dumped it.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of this writing, you can stream this on Prime. It's worth streaming and giving an indie film like this your support. Considering it's already been dumped by Netflix, better to catch it sooner rather than later. And the next time we see Dolph on here, it'll be the big 60 for him.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3074952

And if you haven't yet, check out my novel, Chad in Accounting, in paperback or on Kindle!