It is an old saying that you
cannot have enough friends. To an extent, this is true as really it should be
rephrased to you can never have enough good
friends because there is another old saying that rings more truly - that
you would be lucky to count one person at your funeral as a true friend. ‘Among Friends’ is scream
queen Danielle Harris’ directorial debut that really brings home how truly
awful people can be and may help you to question how many of your friends
actually are friends. It is scripted by and co-starring the also beautiful and
talented as Harris is Alyssa Lobit as the film’s antagonist Bernadette who is a
psychologist by profession and hostess of a pseudo-murder mystery party as she has
a dark hidden agenda for her group of thirty-something guests. She exposes them
as the rotten people they really are bringing their true deep down inside
despicable selves to the surface.
Set
in Hollywood against an 80’s backdrop six friends are picked up one by
one in a Limousine (three men and three women) - Adam (AJ Bowen), Marcus
(Christopher Backus), Blane (Chris Meyer), Melanie (Jennifer Blanc),
Jules (Brianne Davis), Sara (Kamala Jones) - and are all taken to
Bernadette’s party. There is one extra guest missing though - Lily (Dana
Daurey). Former Jason Voorhees and present Victor Crowley performer
Kane Hodder in a two-scene cameo plays the driver. Upon arrival, the
couple Blane and Jules pop mushrooms together and start tripping as all
of the group are sitting at the dinner table when the friends discover
they have all been drugged losing all feeling from the waist down. This
is where Alyssa reveals her real game to her guests.
After tying them up to their chairs with duct
tape, she shows them that she has had cameras hidden around their homes and that
she is going to expose them to each other how they really are behind closed doors. She
also explains a couple of rules. They only get to ask her one question each but
each question she answers results in her taking something from them that
usually involves mutilation. The group gets to vote as to whether she gets to
do things or not but it is the minority and not the majority rule that decides.
Therefore, only one vote can decide her actions. After it is asked what has
happened to Lily, Alyssa tells them that she is upstairs and shows them on her
TV screen from a video camera in the location that Lily is unconscious in her
bathtub. A night of terrible truths and torture ensues.
This is all it is. Lobit has
written her screenplay with careful consideration in mind for an ultra-low
budget production and the limited resources the director would have to work
with creating a story (if it can be called that) around that. Danielle Harris’ over
two decades experience entertaining horror fans in front of the camera learning
her filmmaking craft from her directors has paid off in the respect of delivering a
technically sound debut behind the camera utilizing those limited resources to
full effect to realize the script. There is just little story here to be
invested in though. It is not the problem that it is a situation based movie set
entirely in one location but the whole of the proceedings is just one act with no twists and turns. The
so called friends show up, are drugged, tied up, are shown what complete and
utter shitbags they are to each other behind their backs, turn on each other
while the cast annoyingly overacts and are cut up. That is it. The
unsatisfactory abrupt ending in relation to Lily does not resolve any of this
either. In fact, it is so anti-climactic it really is not an ending at all and
is as if the film just decides to stop with an unfinished narrative. It is also
hard to ignore the implausible great big gaping plot hole of how all the cameras Bernadette
has hidden around their residences just so happens to catch everything that they
have been up to that serves as their reasons for being there.
The characters are
two-dimensional and obnoxiously unlikable. Their vindictive bickering
instead of banding together to help each other get out of their predicament
showing no redeeming qualities after their treacherous behaviour is revealed
just makes it impossible to care about them to sympathize for their situation
and it is hard to give a shit what is going on. To make it worse Bernadette has
no motivation whatsoever. This total lack of backstory renders her actions
unjustifiable and no reasoning to explain what she is doing makes her just as
unlikable and no better than the horrible people she is torturing. Any
explanations she does give are just nonsensical holding no water. All this
serves to render the film emotionless and is made all the worse by the failed
attempts at humour.
I do not doubt the talent of
either Danielle Harris or Alyssa Lobit. We have all seen Harris’ big acting
chops in front of the camera and she gets the best she can out of this weak
screenplay being behind it and pulls off some impressive visuals too. The best of
which is Jule’s trippy hallucinations including cameos from the director in the
clown costume she wore in Halloween: The Return of Michael Myers (1988) and the great Michael Biehn (husband of
Blunt). Lobit despite the weak characterization from her own writing puts in a
solid performance and is menacingly convincing as the movie’s psychotic
antagonist even if her character’s motivations are not. It is as a screenwriter
here that she fails.
‘Among Friends’ is a bad
film no two ways about it. However, Danielle Harris shows potential here with
some interesting elements in what could be a promising second career. I think
it is best to think of this as a messy experimentation as Harris hones her
skills and I think this is the only reason to watch it as if your viewing the
very first work of a film student; it may be shit but you can see a few
peanuts worth picking out. If she can find the right script, a possible sophomore
directorial effort from one of the best scream queens working in horror today could be
something a lot more worthwhile.
* out of ****
Dave J. Wilson
©2013 Cinematic Shocks, Dave J. Wilson
- All work is the property of the credited author and may not be reprinted or
reproduced elsewhere without permission.
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