Released: October 2019

Director: Rolfe Kanefsky

Not Rated

Run Time: 97 Minutes

Distributor: ITN Distribution

Genre: Horror

Cast:
Tara Reid: Tess Berryman
Richard Greico: Douglas Winter
Jessica Morris: Gina Wilson
Alex Rinehart: Kim Katlin
Robert Donavan: Father Gregory Mendale
Lukas Hassel: Dylan Wilson
Zachary Chyz: Louis Wilson

The indie film scene, despite the quality of some of the films, tends to be a bit of a haven for different kinds of movies, especially if they’re made on a shoestring budget.  Back in the day, in order to get audiences to see your indie film, you HAD to have a distributor, no matter what.  These days, all you need to distribute your film is basically an online video service like Youtube or Vimeo.  If you got lucky, you could distribute your films through Netflix, Hulu or Amazon.  What I really love about the indie film scene is the ability for people to tackle something original.  You don’t see a lot of originality in big-budget blockbusters these days.  Certain kinds of movies work better with a smaller budget than they do with a bigger budget.  With horror movies, the small budget forces the filmmakers how to approach effects and story content.  Most theater chains will not take movies with extreme violent and sexual content.  But with the indie scene and direct-to-video releases, you can really let loose as long as you’re not actually violating any laws.  Some of my favorite horror movies of all time are indie movies: The Terminator, Evil Dead, Hatchet, and Revenge among others.  Well, we got ourselves another indie horror film for you today:  Art of the Dead.

Art of the Dead follows an architect, Dylan Wilson and his wife, Gina as they purchase a set of seven paintings from a local art gallery.  Each painting is supposed to represent one of the Seven Deadly Sins: Wrath, Pride, Greed, Lust, Sloth, Gluttony, and Envy.  When the paintings arrive at the Wilson family’s home, bizarre things start to happen.  Gina begins to act very strangely after staring into the painting of a goat, Dylan’s teenage daughter, Donna, starts getting jealous of a fellow classmate, and Louis, the son, is getting frustrated by being accused of not putting any passion into his paintings.  As it turns out, the original artist who created these paintings, sold his soul to the devil so he could live forever through his art.  The one man who knows what’s going on, Father Mendale, enlists the aid of Louis’ girlfriend, Kim, so they can save the family before things get worse.  There aren’t a lot of movies out there where artwork is the main cause of terrifying and tragic events.  Art of the Dead takes a unique approach to the supernatural genre by infusing it with literal artwork.  The idea of a painting that’s possessed or cursed is really bizarre concept, but it actually works for this film’s concept.  It works better than it has any real right to.

From a visual standpoint, this film looks pretty good.  It’s a gory movie, but thankfully, the effects are mostly practical and what CGI there is has been kept to a minimum.  It’s actually rare to see that in a movie like this or in any modern theatrical horror flick.  Most times, filmmakers opt for CGI blood and forego any practical effects at all.  There are effects companies out there that still use prosthetics and gallons of fake blood for the films.  The concept of the film is very interesting.  Each painting represents a particular Sin out of the Seven Deadly Sins.  The painting that’s supposed to represent Lust basically turns Gina into a very promiscuous woman, even though she normally isn’t.  Wrath makes Louis get angry easily and lashes out at anybody who criticizes his work, Gluttony sees a worker consume so much that he literally bursts, and Greed has Dylan trying to make deals that will net him more money.  As you can see, each incident represents a particular theme.  The only other movie that I know of that dealt with the Seven Deadly Sins was….well….Seven.  The overall execution(pardon the pun) is very competent.

The acting, though, is where Art of the Dead kind of goes off the rails.  It’s not that the performances were awful, it’s just that they ranged from being undersold to oversold.  They either didn’t do enough to sell the scene, or they went over-the-top.  Certain sequences were fine with the over-the-top aspects.  Seeing Dylan go bonkers was certainly amusing, but a lot of it was just really bizarre.  I really did like Alex Rinehart as Kim and Robert Donavan, however.  Alex gave the character this nice “girl-next-door” vibe but also didn’t make the character an idiot either.  Donavan plays Father Mendale, and he’s the closest thing you would’ve gotten to a real hero character.  This character had a history with these paintings and tried to warn the family about artwork’s history.  He was fairly convincing in the role.  Honestly, I did a bit of a double-take with Mr. Donavan, because he looked kind of like Bryan Cranston from Breaking Bad.  Tara Reid, though, is Tara Reid, and she’s only in the film for a total of about 8 minutes, despite her credit as a producer.  I never really cared for Tara Reid as an actress and Art of the Dead doesn’t convince me otherwise.  I have nothing against her personally, I’m just not impressed with her work.  Overall, the acting is passable, but there’s nothing award-winning here.

Honestly, I wasn’t expecting a whole lot here with a title like Art of the Dead.  You would expect, rightfully so, that a film like this would just come across as a cheap throw-away fright flick.  What we ended up getting is something surprisingly good.  There’s nothing ground-breaking with what you’re seeing, but this is definitely leagues beyond what a lot of indie filmmakers are capable of doing.  There’s definitely a lot of effort put into this film, and it’s a bit smarter than I initially gave it credit for.  This is very much an old-school kind of horror flick in the vein of something like The Evil Dead.  I think if you look at it from that perspective, you’re going to have a good time.  For those enjoy gore, sex and the supernatural, there’s plenty here to satisfy you.  It’s not without its issues, but I think the good outweighs the bad.  It’s worth checking out.  The film is currently available on DVD through retailers such as Walmart and Amazon.  It’s also available on Video on Demand through Amazon Prime as well as Comcast Xfinity InDemand.

My Final Recommendation: I’ll never look at art the same way again.  8/10

Los Angeles, CA — October 13th, 2019 —  ITN Distribution, Inc. is proud to, Inc. is proud to announce the North American release of Rolfe Kanefsky’s film ART OF THE DEAD, an engaging and entertaining supernatural horror film starring Tara Reid (American Pie series), Richard Grieco (“21 Jump Street”, If Looks Could Kill), Jessica Morris (“One Life to Live”), Lukas Hassel (The Black Room), Robert Donavan, Alex Rinehart (The Black Room), and Tania Fox (Puppet Master: Axis Termination).

WATCH THE TRAILER

The DVD release rolled out on October 1st, 2019, in stores nationwide, including Walmart, and online at Amazon.com. It’s currently available for purchase or rental through VOD channels, such as Amazon, Comcast Xfinity InDemand, Charter, Cox, TWC, and Brighthouse.

Art of the Dead was produced by Sonny Mahal and Michael Mahal who wrote and produced the horror-comedy film Party Bus to Hell and directed by award winning filmmaker Rolfe Kanefsky of There’s Nothing Out There (recently released by Vinegar Syndrome on blu ray), Nightmare Man, Party Bus to Hell and The Black Room fame.

FILM LOGLINE:

A collection of paintings unleash horror on an unsuspecting family corrupted by the seven deadly sins of greed, envy, gluttony, lust, sloth, pride, and wrath.

FILM SYNOPSIS

When wealthy businessman, Dylan Wilson (Lukas Hassel), purchases a collection of seven paintings from gallery auctioneer Tess Barryman (Tara Reid, American Pie), he has no idea what horrors he has unleashed for himself, his wife; Gina (Jessica Morris, TV’s “One Life to Live”), his college son; Louis (Zachary Chyz), his teen-age daughter; Donna (Cynthia Aileen Strahan), and his two little kids. Only Father Mendale (Robert Donavan) knows what evils lurk inside this deadly art and the history of Dorian Wilde; the artist who made a pact with dark forces when he created these paintings that represent the seven deadly sins. Now, anyone who comes in contact with these pictures are corrupted by Pride, Lust, Gluttony, Sloth, Greed, Envy, and Wrath! It’s up to Father Mendale and Louis’ girlfriend; Kim (Alex Rinehart) to save Dylan and his family before they are all destroyed by the art of the dead!

 “Art of the Dead” received 5 out of 5 stars from ‘Depthinfilmreview.com’ and is the film ReelReviews.com calls “trippy” and “visually arresting.”

“Art of the Dead is an acid trip.” “7 out of 10.” – HorrorSociety

About ITN Distribution, Inc.

ITN Distribution, Inc. (ITN) is a leading independent film distribution company that specializes in genre and star driven independent films for limited theatrical release, television, PPV, cable/satellite/telco VOD, TVOD/EST, SVOD, AVOD, ancillary and home video in the domestic and foreign markets.

https://www.itnfilms.net/

For the longest time in the film and entertainment industries, woman were not taken as seriously as their male counter-parts.  These industries have been dominated by men since the beginning of the 20th century.  In most cases, female characters were generally expected to be side characters that didn’t do much aside being damsels-in-distress, looking pretty, or being completely evil.  Over the past 30 or 40 years, the pendulum has been swinging the other way, although not as far as some would have hoped.  That being said, there have been a lot of female characters that have been extremely memorable, and for the right reasons.  There have been a lot of influential women in the industry over the years that have shaped and changed the industry into something that was once been dominated ONLY by men, not just behind the camera, but in front as well.  In my opinion, there is no bad time to celebrate women’s contributions to cinema.  For this post, I’m going to discuss some of the most bad-ass female characters to grace the silver screen.  Lead characters or side characters, these women have thrown the doors open on what women can accomplish in this industry.  Ladies, this one’s for you.

Starr Carter(Amandla Stenberg)The Hate U Give

Being bad-ass isn’t always about how well you can beat somebody up or the distance you can shoot people from.  Sometimes, it’s all about standing up for what’s right and confronting the evils of society.  Amandla Stenberg plays Starr Carter, a black female student who was a witness to a police shooting.  Over the course of the film, we see Starr go from being distraught to somebody who became the face of a movement.  While The Hate U Give is based on a book, it plays out like something that’s ripped from today’s headlines.  Amandla’s performance is one for the record books.  This particular scene has Starr confronting a fellow student who doesn’t realize that she’s racist.  Starr is bad-ass because she’s a girl that’s willing to confront issues that have plagued the African-American community for decades.

Hua Mulan(Zhao Wei)- Mulan: Rise of A Warrior

I picked this version of the story over the Disney animated film, because I felt it better represented the legend of Hua Mulan.  The story of Mulan was written centuries ago in China and concerned a peasant girl who took up her father’s sword to defend her country.  The story is really good because when it was written, women were expected to be subservient and obedient.  It was part of the culture.  While Mulan is not an actual historical figure, as far as we know, she may have been modeled on women that defied cultural norms to fight for their homeland.  This film shows a peasant girl that defied her father’s will to rise in the ranks of the army and become a general.  The movie definitely has a lot of action, but at its core was a woman that wanted to defend her family and country against a growing threat and succeed.  You really don’t get to be more bad-ass than that.

Maleficent – Sleeping Beauty

Maleficent is one of the greatest female villains of all time and certainly one of Disney’s most notorious.  If you’re going to be a villain, you may as well go the distance, right?  This character is so evil that when she’s spurned by the king and queen, she puts a curse on their child.  Now, one would think that would be cowardly, but she shows up with not a care in the world and manages to scare the soldiers enough that they don’t dare approach her.  Yeah, she’s evil, but she actually succeeds in carrying out her curse, to a degree.  Obviously, she’s thwarted by the fairies, but still, you have to admit the audacity of a villain to walk in and curse a royal child with death in front of the parents and just disappear without a care in the world.  Maleficent is bad-ass and she knows it.  She even turns into a fire-breathing dragon!  How freakin’ awesome is that?

Leia Organa(Carrie Fisher)-Star Wars

Leia Organa is an important character not just in Star Wars but also in cinema in general.  George Lucas took the princess-in-distress trope and turned it on its head.  Leia is quick-witted, good with a blaster and a take-charge kind of woman.  The moment you see her in the original, you know she’s bad-ass.  Over the course of an entire trilogy, she becomes even more bad-ass, even when she eventually falls for Han Solo.  The late Carrie Fisher took what could’ve been a typical princess role and opened the door for more women to take on roles that had them do more than just stand around looking scared and waiting for somebody to rescue them.  Leia Organa is one of the greatest female characters of all time and we have Carrie Fisher to thank for that.

Ellen Ripley(Sigourney Weaver)-Alien Series

Leia Organa, as a character, may have opened the doors to women trying to break out of the typical female stereotype, it was Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley that took the next step.  Introduced in Ridley Scott’s Alien in 1979, Ellen Ripley quickly became a character known for her tenacity, quick-thinking and general bad-assery.  Sigourney Weaver and Ripley quickly became the face of the Alien films, at least until Alien 3.  I don’t count Resurrection because that just feels like a different movie.  No movie shows Ellen Ripley as a bad-ass more so than James Cameron’s Aliens.  While the character was struggling with what happened in the original film, she’s recruited to head back to LV-426 to investigate the disappearance of colonists that had set up shop there.  Not only is Aliens one of the best science fiction sequels of all time, it also gives Ripley a more emotionally charged arc that has her fighting back against the creatures that killed her crew.  Again, the character was take-charge type and put up with shit from NOBODY.

Sarah Connor(Linda Hamilton)Terminator 2: Judgment Day

While the original Terminator saw Sarah Connor as a helpless victim trying to avoid being killed by a murderous machine from the future, Terminator 2 takes the character and turns her into a warrior woman.  While bad-ass in every sense of the phrase, I picked this particular scene for a couple of reasons.  It shows the character on a mission to kill the creator of Skynet, only to realize that she’s a human being and not a Terminator.  The moment Sarah realizes what she’s about to do has her recoiling and backing away before she ends an innocent man’s life.  This moment shows the character both at her most bad-ass and her most vulnerable.  This scene also marks a turning point in the film in which the characters go on the offensive against Skynet.

Hai Phuong/Than Wolf(Veronica Ngo/Hoa Thanh)-Furie

Now, let’s get into some serious fisticuffs.  Furie is a Vietnamese action thriller that has the character of Hai Phuong tracking down her daughter that had been kidnapped by human traffickers.  Sound familiar?  What separates this film from something like say Taken, is that the lead AND the villain are both women, and both are very bad-ass in their own way.  Hai Phuong is a former gang-member trying to protect her daughter, and Than Wolf is a human trafficker intent on selling Hai’s daughter to organ traffickers.  It’s an emotionally packed story that has some serious heavy-hitting action.  This battle between the two characters is awesome because both actresses do their own fighting and it’s brutal.  It’s an awesome action film.

Sofia(Halle Berry)John Wick Chapter 3: Parabellum

In the world of John Wick, hurting a dog is pretty much a death sentence.  Never mess with an assassin’s dog.  I’ve never been a huge fan of Halle Berry’s, but she really steals the show during this part of the film.  The character of Sofia used to be an assassin, but ended up managing one of the guild’s hotels in Casablanca when John Wick shows up.  What I really love about this scene is seeing Halle’s character go into full-on murder mode.  What’s even better, is that she has two German Shepard dogs with bulletproof vests that she uses in these fight sequences.  Sofia is pretty much on equal footing with John Wick in terms of combat capability.  She’s one of the few characters in these films that could go toe-to-toe with John Wick and possibly come out on top.  She’s not in the film for very long, but boy does she make an impression.

X-23(Dafne Keen)Logan

I was honestly not expecting the character of X-23 to be as savage as she was in Logan.  Should’ve expected it, though, given that she was created using Wolverine’s DNA.  Essentially, she’s his daughter, and like him, she’s got a temper and mean streak to match.  It was actually very shocking to see a little girl just slicing and dicing grown men left and right.  The movie itself was phenomenal and Hugh Jackman was amazing as always, but Dafne Keen’s X-23 almost steals the show, she’s that good.  I honestly would love to see a spin-off film with X-23, which is ironic considering Logan is a spin-off in and of itself.  Daphne Keene is one to watch out for if she ever takes up the claws again.

There are definitely a lot more amazing female characters out there.  These are just some of my favorites.  It’s absolutely incredible to see so many amazing female characters showing up.  While there have been strong female characters over the years, we’ve really begun to see them show up in the last decade.  I can’t wait to see more.

Released: March 2013

Director: Brad Anderson

Run Time: 95 Minutes

Rated R

Distributor: Sony Pictures/Tri-Star Entertainment

Genre: Thriller

Cast:
Halle Berry: Jordan Turner
Abigail Breslin: Casey Welson
Morris Chestnut: Officer Paul Phillips
David Otunga: Officer Jake Devans
Michael Eklund: Michael Foster

Your average kidnap thriller is pretty straightforward as you can get.  They should be.  An effective kidnap thriller can’t deviate from the main plot point, so any extraneous twists and red herrings are thrown out the window for a more simplified and intense experience.  The length of a kidnap thriller will ultimately depend on what the filmmakers want to do with it.  Do they want to do what Denis Villeneuve did with Prisoners and opt for a more slow-burn experience that really gets under the skin of the audience?  Or do they want to hit the ground running like Taken?  Neither approach is particularly wrong, it ultimately depends on what you, the audience, wants to experience.  If you’re more akin to something that lasts maybe an hour and a half, then something like Prisoners may not be your cup of tea.  However, if you want something that’s a bit more cerebral than Liam Neeson beating down human traffickers, than maybe Prisoners is more your style.  So, where does The Call reside?  This one is strictly for the roller-coaster, thrill-ride crowd.  But is it any good?

The film opens on a Los Angeles-based 9-1-1 operating center that most people call “The Hive.”  This center has well over a dozen people fielding emergency calls ranging from bats flying around in a house to murders.  One operator, Jordan Turner, gets a call from a young girl saying that her house was broken into by crazed person.  While Jordan tells the girl to hide, the phone gets disconnected.  When she calls back, the ringing phone alerts the intruder to the girl’s presence and the girl ends up being kidnapped and murdered.  Because of this mistake, Jordan decides to step away from the phones and teach new people how the whole thing works.    Meanwhile, another young girl, Casey, is abducted from a mall and tossed into the trunk of a car.  When Casey calls 9-1-1, Jordan takes over from an inexperienced rookie and tries to work with Casey so they can find her before it’s too late.  It’s not very often that we actually get to see what goes on behind the scenes at an emergency response center.  It actually lends a degree of authenticity to what could have been a fairly generic plot.  For the first two-thirds of the film, the story is simple, yet fairly compelling in how it’s shown to the audience.  I say the first two-thirds of the film, because the last third of the film basically comes from a completely different kind of film and it just doesn’t really fit in with what’s been taking place so far.  Aside from the final act, which I will address a little later in this post(I won’t spoil it for you), it’s a surprisingly effective little thriller.

In order for a thriller like this to work, you need to have actors and performances that can really sell the tension and desperation.  Thankfully, The Call has a pretty strong cast here.  Michael Eklund plays the kidnapper and definitely gives the character a really creepy and unsettling vibe.  Morris Chestnut plays Officer Paul Phillips, Jordan’s boyfriend, and he does a pretty decent job here.  The real stars of the show here are Halle Berry and Abigail Breslin.  I’ve never been a huge fan of Halle’s, but she turns in a very powerful performance here as Jordan Turner, silly hairdo notwithstanding.  From the moment she is talking to the first victim, we can definitely get a sense of dread and desperation from her voice and when things go horribly wrong, she loses it.  Abigail, initially turns in a performance of a typical teenage girl, but when she’s thrown into a trunk, she gives an incredibly gut-wrenching performance as a girl that is truly afraid that she might get killed.  She definitely sells it.  The back-and-forth between Jordan and Casey is one of the big highlights of the film, with Jordan trying to calm Casey and get her to start helping herself by trying to bring attention to the car that she’s trapped in.  Honestly, if it wasn’t for Halle Berry and Abigail Breslin’s performances, I don’t think this film would have registered on anybody’s radar.  The marketing certainly didn’t do the film any favors.

I absolutely dig the cinematography and production designs here.  While the set of the response office was built from scratch, it’s apparently based on one the actual centers in Los Angeles.  It’s really interesting seeing how these people actually work.  I’ve always wondered what it’s like on the other side of that phone call.  But a lot of the film generally takes place between two locations: Jordan’s response center and the trunk that Casey is trapped in.  The camera-work here is very interesting, because the trunk is a very cramped place so the camera is essentially right up in Abigail’s face.  It gives you a sense of claustrophobia that’s incredibly palpable.

In case you haven’t noticed, I really dig this movie.  There’s a lot to like here.  It’s a kidnap thriller, so the time-crunch really helps give the film that sense of urgency that is required for films like this.  When the film works, it’s one of the most intense movies I’ve ever seen.  When it doesn’t, it really doesn’t.  Honestly, the only time that I think the film doesn’t really work is in the final act.  When it comes to ending thrillers like this, you need to have an ending that is not only satisfying, but also logical.  Up until this point, The Call has been a fairly realistic and intense thriller that I could easily recommend to anybody who has a passing interest in the genre.  However:  The final act of the film takes an unfortunate turn into serial-killer horror film territory.  With everything that Halle’s character was doing in the film up to this point, having Jordan try to solve the crime herself really stretches the film’s credibility.  I get that they were trying to go for something empowering.  That would’ve been fine…..in a different film.  That’s because the final act of the film feels like it belongs in a completely different movie.  It damn near ruins all the good will that The Call was trying to build.  It feels like the filmmakers wrote themselves into a corner that they didn’t know how to get out of.  Does it really wreck the rest of the film?  For a lot of people it has.  For me, I kind of went with it and I still managed to enjoy the whole thing, but it is a stark contrast to the rest of the film and brings the score down quite a bit.

So, would I still recommend The Call despite the film’s ending?  Honestly, yeah.  This is pretty good for a rental or buying on the cheap.  I picked it up for less than 7 bucks, so it wasn’t a bad deal.

My Final Recommendation: Don’t crank call 9-1-1.  They’ve got a lot of stuff going on.  7/10.