20130802_c: Horror Film Review--Naked Fear

Naked Fear

1. American live action theatrical film, 108 minutes, rated R, released in 2007.
2. Stars Danielle DeLuca (Diana, the protagonist), Joe Montegna (the corrupt local sheriff).
3. IMDB gave it 5.3/10.0 from 1,191 users.
4. Rotten Tomatoes gave it 'no reviews yet', with 28% favourable audience ratings from 313 users.
5. Diana is a young (23), pretty, broke, exotic dancer from Texas who arrives in the small New Mexico town of Santa Paula already owing money.  She needs to get out from under her debt to the dirt bag who paid her way into town.
6. As a back story, there's a new deputy in town (Dwight) who got kicked out of his last job for investigating the mayor in his previous town.  He takes an interest in all the dancers at 'Cheeks' (strip bar on Indian land) who have gone missing.  One of the older dancers also shows an interest.  Joe Mantegna's character Tom is the sheriff around town, and he helps keep all the bad things in town going the way they are.
7. In order to get money to leave Cheeks, Diana tries performing in full nudity.  That gets her a bit of money, but also gets the club owner to inform her that it's illegal and to quit.  On Diana's first attempt at prostitution, she gets kidnapped.  She wakes up naked in the middle of nowhere.  That is the setting for most of the film.
8. The kidnapper/hunter (Colin) succeeds for a while, but Diana strikes back.  Soon she gets some assistance from a man and his too young sons.  Dwight found some weak evidence against Colin, but the Sheriff quashes Dwight's efforts.  Colin catches up with Diana, and things get much worse.
9. The cinematography is wonderful, and many of the shots of the scenery are gorgeous.
10. The sound is also excellent.
11. The screenplay was competent, and the direction good enough that the story moved right along.
12. Danielle DeLuca is a better actress than I expected, and was interested to find that she has a BA in Theatre and Dance from UT Austin.  However, the many minutes of well-lit full frontal nudity takes away from that, as did the salacious content of the film (stripping, drug use, prostitution, kidnapping, hunting of human quarry, murder).
13. Joe Mantegna has been in some cheesy movies in his career, and this is definitely one of them.  In the television series Criminal Minds, he almost always takes the higher moral ground.  This was a bit of a shock to see him return to his older form.
14. Most of the other actors were between competent and too bland.
15. In honor of the unexpected Hollywood ending, I give this one four of five stars.