DREAMHOUSE NIGHTMARE

 

DREAM HOUSE NIGHTMARE : C 

Although it was not a Lifetime Movie Network film, it could have easily passed as one. Based on a true story, this film would have benefited sticking to the actualities of the real life situation & would have been better off to have omitted the made up parts. What really happened was already interesting enough, it didn't need all of the doctoring up that it received. The old saying "Sometimes less is more" really applies here as DREAM HOUSE NIGHTMARE illustrates exactly what that is countless times throughout the entire film. 

Not that there weren't elements of the film that deserve praise. For one the opening was extremely gripping & uniquely clever.  We are at first introduced to the antagonist set up as if she is the protagonist. We are immediately introduced to her situation as we empathize with the struggles she has endured. Her house was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, her husband suffered a bad injury & is addicted to pills & she has the burden of raising an autistic daughter.  Then suddenly when the other couple shows up, it dawns on you that THEY are the protagonist and that she is the antagonist. It was a very well done reversal & it deserves to be recognized for how well it was shot. Unfortunately it's also the highlight of the entire film. 

I appreciate how the character of Madison portrayed by Terese Aiello was multi-dimensional.  While you don't empathize with her sociopathic behavior & all of the horrible things she does to the Wade family, you at least get to dive into her psyche and understand what drove her to the point of insanity.  Aiello did a great job of portraying the character & giving a realistic portrayal of such a person in a situation. 

Also props to Tenea Intriago. Playing someone with a mental disability is perhaps one of the hardest roles an actor can be given. I've seen some very well known, talented actors struggle with it in the past. Even some that just plain weren't able to do it. Juliette Lewis couldn't pull it off in THE OTHER SISTER & for that matter neither could Giovanni Ribisi. Intriago's performance was every bit as good as was Sean Penn's in I AM SAM or John Malkovich in OF MICE AND MEN. She nailed a very difficult part & she should be recognized for it. 

As to Rachel Whittle, her performance as Theresa Wade was 100% Lifetime Movie Network award winning worthy. She felt very unrealistic, written to the page and unnatural. Not sure if that was the way the character was written or if that was just the way she played the part. While blame wonders where exactly to be placed, the fact is, the performance felt odd and abnormal.  

Where this film really suffered was within the last 20 minutes. Had the film ended where Madison had gotten arrested & the credits rolled upon her being placed in the back of the squad car, the film might have earned a C+ or even a B-.   The film's focus was on Madison and the horrors she put the Wade family through. That was the entire focus of the film & then suddenly the last 20 minutes shifted to Madison's husband & her daughter. I think what the film was trying to go for, was to show how Autistic individuals can be heroes. While I appreciate the sentiment, it was out of place here & it robbed us from the reward of seeing Madison get her due. Furthermore it cheapened the heroic save made by her daughter.  Subplots should be woven into the main plot of a story and that wasn't done here. Instead it felt like two different films. The one ending definitively & the other rushed to be told in the last 20 minutes. 

It could have been worse though & that fact isn't lost on me.  It wasn't good, it wasn't all that bad, it was in many ways just ok.  If you're hard up for something to watch, you could do a lot worse. 

SHARK BAIT

 

SHARK BAIT 
C-

This flick felt like a student film through and through & I was actually surprised to see the seniority involved within the project. Screenwriter Nick Saltrese has been in the business for over 30 years, yet the screenplay felt uncomfortably simplistic and formulaic. Director James Nunn has been honing his craft for nearly 15 years & yet the film's direction felt so guarded and played safe that you would have thought this was his first project.  It was predictable from start to finish. One of those once you've seen one, you've seen em' all experiences. You saw the scenes unfold in your head long before they ever happened. You could hear the dialog word for word before it was spoken. It was painfully obvious from the start that Nat would be the sole survivor.  If anyone were to call "SPOILERS!!" in return I ask the following question:  Will the sun rise tomorrow morning? That's how blatantly obvious the film is. 

Nat is immediately established as the one likeable character. While Tyler matches Tom, Milly & Greg in terms of carelessness and stupidity, he's at least not as unsympathetic as the other three characters.  The screenplay gives you little reason to root for Tyler or hope for his survival but at the same time you don't enjoy the Shark's devouring of him in the way you do Greg or Milly. There is an attempt to salvage Tom's deplorable behavior, but we're cheated out of a true act of pure selflessness due to the fact that he's already wounded beyond repair. 

SHARK BAIT could easily be summed up as a film of a group of irresponsible knotheads served up one by one as a smorgasbord for a hungry shark. It absolutely astounds me that as nitpicky as audiences can be in terms of accuracy and honest depiction, you can literally get everything about shark behavior and what a shark would actually do in such a situation W-R-O-N-G, yet nobody bats an eye. 10 minutes on google, you'd quickly find the answer to be "No" in 9/10's of the questions you'd ask in response to this film.  "Would a Shark really?" No.  "Does sharks actually?" No.  No, no, no.  Doesn't matter, because while dramas, comedies, and even pornos are held to a standard, thrillers and horrors obviously aren't. 

There's nothing all that reprehensible about the film. It's sitthroughable. You're not going to run to the video store to obtain a copy to put in your DVD collection but you're not going to turn the film off in disgust either. There are a ton of films way better but this is far from the worst thing I've ever seen either. Slightly below average and you have a very fair grade.  

THE MURDER OF NICOLE BROWN SIMPSON

 

THE MURDER OF NICOLE BROWN SIMPSON: D- 

Stupidity has hit a whole new level. I feel somewhat bad for saying that as I once met the director, Daniel Farrands at a convention in St. Louis years ago. It's funny because when I met him all those years ago we talked of how a director had more or less butchered one of his screenplays. Nevetheless this film was just bad. Bad in about everyway a film can be bad. 

Why a D- instead of an F? Well I have to give credit where credit is due. Mena Suvari and Nick Stahl despite what they had to work with still gave convincing performances for the most part. When actors do their best, despite everything else, I have to give them props for effort. 

This film is tasteless. Plain and simple, absolutely tasteless. I remember first hearing of the plausible connection to Glen Rogers over 20 years ago. I thought it was a farfetched, damn near 0% plausibility theory back then and I think the same thing now.  To entertain such an improbable postulation makes a mockery of a very real tragedy where loved ones lost their lives in a very real heinous event. To treat  a matter of this magnitude as a novelty is rather shameful. 

It absolutely astounds me the filth that can get green lit when so many good, solid ideas lay dormant. This film hooked it's audience in with a clever title making them think that they were getting into a depiction of real life events and then unabashedly pulled a bait and switch into this ridiculous circus of obvious sensationalism and fiction.   

It's hard to even evaluate this film in any other area as that cardinal sin forever cements it into pipes that carry our sewage. Flush it down the toilet where it belongs.  This film was pure waste.