Fall Down Dead (2011/Image DVD) + In Her Skin
(2008/IFC/MPI DVD) + The Roommate
(2011/Sony DVD) + Student Services
(2010/IFC/MPI DVD)
Picture: C Sound: C+/B-/C+/C+ Extras: C-/C/C-/C- Films: C-/C/C-/C
There is
nothing sadder than thrillers or sexy drams that do not work and here are four
that really missed the mark….
Fall Down Dead (2011) is a would-be serial
killer thriller with Udo Kier as the Picasso Killer, on a murder spree in which
he has decided to give himself a Christmas present by not killing, but
tormenting a single mother (Dominique Swain) by showing off his handiwork to
her by terrifying her with his skills.
Can she stop him before he kills again, or will he kill her too? In all this, we get a blackout, twists that
do not work and one of David Carradine’s last performances. Writer Roy Sallows and Director Jon Keeyes
just cannot take this anywhere new despite the talent on hand and the result is
lame.
Simone
North’s In Her Skin (2008) also
sports a solid cast including Guy Pierce, Miranda Otto, Ruth Bradley, Kate Bell
and Sam Neill as another bad guy as one sick young lady tries to live as
another, but this tale of identity theft, psychosis and crazy behavior never
really pans out into anything we have not seen before. Neill is ever-effective and the underrated
Pierce is solid as a father who does not know what to do. Some nice performances, ideas and even
locations ultimately do not add up, but with more ambition, this could have
worked better.
We get a
simpler version of the same thing in The
Roommate (2011), a very watered down variant of another Sony film, the hit Single White Female. However, this is more like one of the endless
rip-offs from the time of the original, except that inept Director Christian E.
Christiansen is clueless when it comes to the concept of suspense or anything
else in the thriller genre. Minka Kelly
plays the new school gal who gets paired with the soon-to-be obsessed Leighton
Meester and the “good girl” has a boyfriend in Cam Gigandet. These are decent-looking actors shot to look
good, but in addition to not working, Sonny Mallhi’s equally inept script has a
few stereotypes (including those about mental health) to go with every cliché
he could stuff into the screenplay. This
is as silly as it is bad and even offensive and ignorant. Frances Fisher has a few scenes and Billy
Zane is wasted as the “sexy older art teacher” showing Christiansen also knows
nothing about handling talent.
That
brings us to Emmanuelle Bercot’s Student
Services (2010), a French film also about college students, but this one is
based on an expose about one young lady (Deborah Francois) needing extra money
for higher education so she decides to go on the Internet and become a hooker
for higher education. Besides being more
realistic down to its nudity and situations than The Roommate, it has a non-American director who knows how to
direct and this is the most ambitious of the four films which can also be
considered a thriller of sorts. The
problem this one gets into is predictability and that we have also seen this
kind of thing before. It is the most
mature of the four works, not stuck in a genre formula, but it just could not
find anything new to say or show about what we see.
The
anamorphically enhanced image on all four releases can be soft, detail
challenged and even lacking in color throughout. Dead
and Student are 1.78 X 1, while the
others are 2.35 X 1 and while they all have some good shots, none of them stand
out. The Dolby Digital 5.1 mixes on all
four have limited soundfields except Skin,
which is the sonic winner here and is the only one that might sound better with
a lossless soundtrack on Blu-ray. Extras
on all four include a trailer, save Roommate
which offers “Dangerous Sexy [or is that stupid] Special Features” including a
weak Director’s Commentary track, Deleted & Alternate Scenes. Skin
also has Deleted Scenes, Interviews and a Behind The
Scenes featurette.
- Nicholas Sheffo
