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The Home Invaders
USA 2016
produced by Michael Fredianelli, Peter Stylianos (executive) for Wild Dogs Productions
directed by Michael Fredianelli
starring Jeremy Koerner, Ray Medved, Maggie VandenBerghe, Michael Fredianelli, Gene Mocsy, Gift Harris, Peter Stylianos, Dawn Cates, James Allen Brewer, Carl Joseph Schreiber, Maralynn Adams, Gabriel Gerhard, Dick Raley, Mike Dinsmore, Chris Reed, Kosuke Okamura, Wesley Righetti
written by Michael Fredianelli, music by Clay Rudolph Scott
review by Mike Haberfelner
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Avery (Jeremy Koerner) has just been released from prison, and now he
wants to remain on the straight and narrow - even if his former boss Frank
(Ray Medved) offers him a job, a simple home invasion, pretty much on the
spot, and his sort-of girlfriend Summer (Maggie VandenBerghe) urges him to
accept it. But no, he dreams of skipping state and running a farm somwhere
in the country - but at the moment he's still a bit short on money, so
accepts a job - only to run into trouble, and to find out his parol
officer Sanders (Gene Mocsy) seems to have some ulterior motives of his
own when handling Avery ... and suddenly, Avery sees himself pretty much
forced to accept Frank's offer and sell him to Sanders ... As mentioned,
the job should have been a simple home invasion, opening a safe, relieving
it of a bunch of papers and then make a getaway - except for two problems,
the men Frank has teamed Avery up with, lame-brained trigger-happy Marco
(Michael Fredianelli) and rape-happy Harry (Gift Harris), are not exactly
the sort of people one would trust all that much and are almost sure to
cause trouble, and then the safe Avery is to open is right in the home
owners' (Peter Stylianos, Dawn Cates) bedroom, and of course they wake up
during Avery's attempts to open the safe. Thing is, the master of the
house gets a grip what's going on pretty quickly, does not keep the papers
in his safe, and wouldn't tell Avery where they are even when Avery lets
Harry rape his wife. Avery finds the papers nevertheless, but he also
finds out he has been tricked by pretty much everyone in the story - and
then bullets start to fly ... Set shortly after World War 2,
this film has been appropriately shot in black and white, and not only the
story but also the aesthetics and even dialogue and score are more than a
little reminiscent of film noirs of old - and it works pretty well,
actually, as this movie never tries to simply ape the style of yesteryear
but uses its look and feel to really bring the story across, and it is
remarkably free of all sorts of post-modernism or self-irony, instead
concentrates on telling a compelling story. And a solid cast doesn't hurt
one bit either of course!
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