“Screen” is an indie horror film from David Paul Baker about the mystery and nightmare surrounding a tragic event around the screening of a low-budget questionable film in the 70’s. In Baker’s film two friends decide to reconnect while exploring the mystery surrounding the event when the 40th anniversary of the tragic presents an opportunity to revisit the drive-in as a party is set to celebrate the anniversary. The official synopsis is as follows : A group of horror fans are found scared to death in front of a drive-in movie screen. Whatever they saw, also bled into their screens on their mobile devices. We go back 24 hours to follow two of the characters from this group. Lola (Nicole Alonso) & Carrie (Leslie Andrews) go on a road trip to attend this Halloween screening event. It's being held at an old disused drive-in movie theatre. They also research the past reports about the drive-in. It's haunted! People died in front of the screen in the 70's. This event is the 40th anniversary of the deaths. Lola begins to realize that carry has personal reasons for attending this party.
“Screen” is more horror-ish, the film is a nice steady story that celebrates the thrill of belonging to an indie horror community as the two friends rekindle their friendship around a story that really brings together two really cool elements, drive-in culture, and indie horror. One is thriving and the other is having a mild revitalization in pockets of the community. In “Screen” David Paul Baker manages to create a nice nostalgic vitality for the drive-in while highlighting some comradery between actual horror fans who make up much of the cast. As for actual horror, there isn’t a lot of that shown in this film. That doesn’t stop this film from being a slow and steady train ride into a fireball of horror with the film’s climax.
The acting and story in “Screen” are pretty cool and modern only leaning lightly on classic elements to create a creepy backdrop for Nicole Alfonso and Leslie Andrews to give a nice, relatable performance. There are some definite moments that seem to show more a male driven want than need when displaying the relationship between the two girls. The hotel scenes and some of the conversation between the two characters at time seem unrealistic and completely pointless other than the desire to show why hetero men love horror cliches. I don’t really think when spend a lot of time talking about cum and girl-on-girl action as was written in this film- but that is just me. It doesn’t take away from the over-all pleasure of the film though. Anyway, as far as action goes, the film is slow moving right up until the last 25 minutes of the film at which point it is like looking into the mouth of Hell and loving it the whole time.
“Screen” delivers a nice, indie atmospheric, personal tale that is delivered wonderfully by two talented actresses. The film really opens up more the horror element at the end which is abrupt and leaves questions that beg answers in a sequel-maybe?! Anyway go into the film knowing that it isn’t a thrill-a-minute nightmare story but for indie film fans that like a good story that leads to one hellish ending then “Screen” is definitely that.
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