Director: Sam Mason-Bell
Year: 2021
Country: United Kingdom
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Psychological Thriller
Plot:
Offered a lucrative film-role, a struggling actress believes that her role will finally be the breakthrough she needs to further her career and dives head-first into researching for the role of a female serial killer that seduces and kills male prostitutes. Diving head-first into everything with the usual gusto she usually affords her roles, she hires out a male prostitute for several days to try out her character’s motivations and lines on as he unsuspectingly walks into her preparations for the role that may not be as safe as he thought when she starts being delusional and psychotic.
Review:
This was a highly enjoyable and impressive serial killer thriller. Most of this is rightfully centered on her, who’s an incredibly chilling and fascinating individual that we get to spend just about the entirety of the film with. As this gives us a fantastic showcase into the depths that she goes to prepare for roles, from preparing color-coded instructions on how the scenes are to play out, research and analyzing the characters’ motivations to a degree that requires her to prepare with unsuspecting victims in person and repeating her lines or actions several times until they’re perfect, this generates an impressive featured character that slowly grows over the course of the film into other likable factors. Since the monologues slowly grow more unhinged and deranged the longer they go on and match the equally deranged state as she tries to keep the character in mind the entire time, this factor easily becomes the highlight of the film.
On top of this, there’s a lot to like with how the whole result of her acting excursion as the outcome of how it all plays out is a cheesy fun time and ends this on a proper psychological note given how the rest of this came together. Where the film stumbles slightly is in the visual presentation of everything, as this goes into a neon-lit arthouse style presentation for several scenes that don’t really mean anything. The idea of her mimicking what she wants to do in the mirror before playing out what’s going on with her friend would’ve been a far better one to differentiate the different conscious states within her, but doing so for several flashily-lit random sequences is jarring after a while. The brief running time might be a slight issue as well since it seems to end right when it was picking up steam in their relationship together but for the most part, there isn’t a lot to dislike with this entry.
Overview: ****/5
A fantastically engaging psychological suspense/thriller that shows a fascinatingly complex individual descending into madness for an acting role, the few slight flaws and hiccups that show up aren’t in the slightest bit enough to hold back the more potent positives here. Those who appreciate stories like this one or are fans of the creative crew will really like this one while viewers that aren’t turned on by these factors in their films should heed caution.
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