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Fresh Hell
USA 2021
produced by Caitlin Conklin, Ryan Imhoff, Christine Vrem-Ydstie for Purr Boy Productions
directed by Ryan Imhoff, Matt Neal
starring Lanise Antoine Shelley, Ryan Imhoff, Will Mobley, Rob Fagin, Crystal Kim, Tyler Owen Parsons, Christina Reis, Randolph Thompson, Christine Vrem-Ydstie, Grant Lancaster, Alison Plott, Erika Haaland, Matt Neal, Becca Rowland, Gavin Mueller
written by Ryan Imhoff
review by Mike Haberfelner
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Available on DVD! To buy, click on link(s) below and help keep this site afloat (commissions earned) |
Always make sure of DVD-compatibility!!!
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The were all great friends in drama school - but that was a few years
back, and since their careers have all taken different trajectories ...
and then Covid struck, and through a series of regular online meetings,
Grace (Lanise Antoine Shelley), Scott (Will Mobley), Todd (Rob Fagin),
Cynthia (Crystal Kim), Brian (Tyler Owen Parsons), James (Randolph
Thompson), Kara (Christine Vrem-Ydstie) and Laura (Christina Reis) have
found one another again - even if it's just for a couple of hours a week,
and only via video call. Then one day, Laura fails to show up, but instead
a stranger (Ryan Imhoff), who seems to be wildly entertaining at first -
but with time goes more and more over the top, until the call ends in
self-castration. Now this is of course disturbing enough to all the
others, but even more so are clips they receive that Laura has been
murdered - not that her body's ever found anywhere, and even calls to her
local police prove to be unconclusive. It seems that most of the friends
soon move on from this experience, only Grace, who has lost her sister in
the early days of the pandemic, stays focused - and then weird things
start happening to the other friends in the meeting, and while most of the
friends, especially "influencer" Scott, insist it's just deep
fake and a prank, Grace insists the horror is real - and then the horror
gets real ... Now the Covid pandemic with all its lockdowns
sure has put a damper on filmmaking and has in turn created a whole new
approach to making movies, which is probably best described as the live
Zoom call - an approach that has been known to feature unexpected levels
of ingenuity but that also is very limited in its options. And the first
part of Fresh Hell shows both extremes, as some shots sure show
inventiveness, but at the end of the day the characters just can never
leave their rectangles. Fortunately the whole approach was ditched for the
extended finale, as the film basically becomes a film again and shows the
two leads squaring off against one another one on one, to quite thrilling
results thanks to an engaging directorial effort, solid performances and a
strong script, to really make this into one very exciting piece of genre
cinema.
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