It’s the weekend, and you feel depressed and lonely. Do you spend some time with your family? Call up your friends? Or perhaps do those chores and sort yoursef out ready for the week ahead? Hell no! You drive to the cheapest, most low-down piece of shit watering hole and get completely hammered. Alcohol: solving all your problems for 5,000 years.
Unfortunately, broke ass bar owner Leon is going through tough times and can’t afford any reliable liquor anymore. With patrons continuing to attend but his stock and supplies rapidly dwindling, he resorts to picking up less than reputable brand tequila which brings with it the invariably deadly results when the larval turns out to be a lethal parasite.
While the production standards are okay, the premise is alright, and the general setup is fine, the sheer length of the flick is not, leaving my immediate impression that it could have been shortened by a third. Or up to a half. Easily. The direction is too amateur to take seriously to prevent the evaporation of interest which begins to occur around its mid-point, which is an amazing stretch to reach in itself.
The jumps and horror scenes are pretty good and generally entertaining, the shoestring shooting conditions are acceptable, and the attempt at social realism is totally cool – 100 minutes is just simply way, way, way too long for its material and content. The lack of tension or suspense and the insufferable insistence of long-winded character-building is especially offkey, helping to exasperate the frustratingly slow pace.
Further to my complaints are the humdrum soundtrack, sloppy sound design, and the poverty of sets or environments. A positive note is that the actors blend well with their scripts; Jeremy Owen (Leon) is immediately likable and makes for a surprisingly strong lead, and the rest work well to build a relationship with the viewer, even if their script is so poorly directed.
Yet it’s so damn long. So little excitement between each major event for attention to be sustained. A film needs to have an agreeable amount of momentum generated to be viewable or enthralling, and with such head-popping violence at the start, more gore, tension and gruesomeness would have gone a huge way. Very very average and stale.
3/10
Possession Media 