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| Great! Meatloaf again. I refuse. |
Working for a growing movie review site means watching a lot
of screeners. Many of these are low
budget films that likely will never be seen in a theater apart from the odd
film festival, and with a dwindling number of remaining brick-&-mortar
video stores left, they'll likely languish for all of eternity in VOD or
streaming purgatory. If you watch enough
of them (and you'll watch more than plenty), you begin to notice patterns or
common themes. For instance, a great
deal of them seem to be at their core about either trying to make it in
Hollywood or dealing with failure there.
There are unique takes on this material spanning every genre known to
filmmaking. The film Deadly Famous takes
on one of the more unique approaches to this particular brand of
meta-filmmaking.
Deadly Famous uses a cinema verite style to tell the
story of Alan Miller (Daniel O'Meara), a former child star turned struggling
actor. He films every moment of his
life, fancying himself an acting teacher and director, to lure young aspiring
actresses into his home to "practice line reads"--at least, until
things get a bit too real. Through
Alan's own cameras we watch his descent from merely creepy to full-on raging
homicidal maniac. All things considered
it’s a pretty interesting premise for a film, but unfortunately here it proves
a bit problematic.
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| It's shoulder massage time! You know what that means. |
O'Meara is effective as the psychotic Alan, effortlessly
bridging the gap from merely lecherous to full-on terrifying. In fact, he's perhaps a bit too good at
making the viewer feel uncomfortable.
The problem is that Alan is a bit one-dimensional, which is the worst
thing a character like this in a movie like this can be. He's reduced to mainly being the creepy bad
guy in a torture porn movie, This may
not even be that accurate of a description, seeing as how most torture porn
villains at least appear to have something resembling a motive. Alan is a truly, deeply evil character that
lacks the necessary depth to elevate himself above the surprisingly tight but
difficult to watch movie that contains him.
Score
-Mike Stec