"The Pining" is a supernatural horror with crime thriller noir aspirations. The film is written and directed by Eduardo Castrillo and produced by Uncia Films. It stars Diogo Hausen (The Dark Knight Rises), Tom Sizemore (Mission Overlord; Black Wake; Halloweed; et al), Jackie Dallas (Stranger Things) and Natalie Gibson.
When members of Joe’s therapy group start dying under mysterious circumstances, Detective Harris is forced to reopen a cold case. Her only lead: burnt-out priest Father William – the group therapy leader who seems to know more than what is in his police statements…
And the movie is as vague as the synopsis reads. Keep it handy, you may wanna refer back to it through the course of watching the movie. You will be as confused and full of questions as the generic detective struggling to solve this case. There's no consistency or proper train of thought going on to anchor the scenes coherently or to allow for the viewer to connect to the writer/director's vision.
There are moments that almost spark some legitimate indie quality. The scenes between the photographer and love-interest model flow easily and naturally. Unfortunately just as you let go of the irritation over lack of understandable story development, editing flaws come along to kill the mood. I swear I saw a couple of scenes play out in different variants of the same scene.
As far as the horror elements go, I liked the body count, I appreciated the follow through on the effects, even with such low-budget quality. There's a few cool kill moments in "The Pining". I have seen plenty of low-budget, homemade horror movies that have either created good horror elements or blew it totally. Now this film definitely blows it, just not so much in the horror, as in every where else. I don't recommend this one unless you just wanna see Tom Sizemore for what little time he is on screen. (2/5)
No comments:
Post a Comment