Dead Sea (2014)

Director:

Brandon Slagle 

Writer:

Brandon Slagle

Cast:

James Duval – Said

Candace Kita – Eve

Chanel Ryan – Clair

Devanny Pinn – Auriel Servus

Alexis Iacono – Victoria Amissus

Brandon Dlagle – Kier Than

Teresa Parker – Sheriff Hughes

Jim Mitchell – Bartender Bill

Britt Griffith – Castor Pollux

Frederic Doss – Dr. Peyton Hamilton

Jennifer Woods – Anna

Ryan Kiser – Adam Than

 

Independent films are something that I am slowly trying to get into, for me they have been really hit or miss. The thing is though, when someone is supportive of the things I do I feel obligated to at least do the same for them. I do art nouveau images, latest works have been featuring horror actress and Devanny Pinn was one of the people who were awesome enough to let me use one of her photos.

Now this movie has a lot of the same people working on it that was on “The Black Dahlia Haunting” which if you read my review you’ll see I was not a fan of it. Here we movie in a very different direction, even has this very heart felt opening that was a very encouraging start. We have a father who appears to be leaving his family, wife and child, only to make his way out to sacrifice himself in the body of water… I think its the ocean but I’m not entirely sure.

Thirty years later a lot of stuff is going on, we have two stories that jump back and forth. They establish who we are suppose to be rooting for and who we are not in a very straight forward manor. We have two men, armed services guys who go from killing unarmed people (still terrorists apparently so that’s ok) to being some sort of drug enforcers/dealers. In a way I feel really bad for on of them, he has lived an awful life but I won’t go too much into the movie because I feel like it is a plot point worth seeing instead of reading on here.

On the other had we have Victoria, a marine biologist who actually lived in the town growing up. In fact that was the reason why she was sent back to that town because she had some history in that are. She does have a ton of history in fact. She knew Kier (the drug guy) and ends up having this very awkward scene where you just expect something horrible to go own right there. Her father is also a vital character in the movie and they have a very strained relationship… in fact it seems like every relationship with her seems to be crumbling or straight up poor. Kind of a jerk really.

The story is something that is very different in deed. At the end of this paragraph there is going to be a bit of a spoiler just warning you ahead of time. Things really get crazy for the cast when both stories start to merge into one, Victoria is back in town and people are starting to die. In fact there is a scene were we have a bunch of college age kids who all end up getting eaten. Sadly I was fairly happy that most of them kicked the bucket but as usual Devanny Pinn is the most likeable character in the whole group. I can’t say it was because the rest of them were bad actresses or anything like that but they were written in to be that way so I can;t knock them for their performance. The issue I have with all of this is that at no moment do we have a good look at the monster which can be both good or bad. It’s great that they don’t overuse it but it left me hanging a little bit.

The biggest drag on this movie was not actually what I just mentioned but it comes down to the audio. For the love of God if you make a film make sure I don’t have to sit there and constantly turn the volume up and down. Several times guns go off and I had to crank the volume way down so I didn’t wake the wife who happens to dislike horror movies. The worst part, the scene that was almost ruined by the low audio on vocals. Was this one between Victoria and her father and it was the best dialogue in the entire film.

I would have ranked the movie higher but the fact that the audio mix was so bad that I ended up missing a bunch of what I’m sure was important dialogue because this movie didn’t seem to waste a whole lot of time. I really wish that they had fixed this because it could have been an enjoyable independent film but they really mucked that up. The fact that we didn’t see the monster actually didn’t hurt the film as much as you may think.

Grade C

Tags: Alexis Iacono, Brandon Dlagle, Britt Griffith, C, Candace Kita, Chanel Ryan, creature feature, Devanny Pinn, Frederic Doss, James Duval, Jennifer Woods, Jim Mitchell, Review, Ryan Kiser, Teresa Parker