20130921: Mystery Review--Absentia

Absentia

1. Production Fundamentals; reception
1. American live action feature length film, 87 minutes, horror, drama, mystery, 2012, rated R.
2. IMDB: 5.6/10.0 from 6,613 users.  Estimated budget: 70,000 USD.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 'No score yet,' and 48% from 700 audience ratings.
4. Written and directed by Michael Flanigan.
5. Starring: Katie Parker as Callie, Courteney Bell as Tricia, Dave Levine as Detective Ryan Mallory, Morgan Peter Brown as Daniel Riley, Justin Gordon as Detective Lonergan.
6. 90 user reviews on IMDB.  That's quite a few for a 70k budget film.


2. Setup, Plot
1. Callie moves back with Tricia, who lives in a burglary prone area of Glendale, CA, USA.


2. Tricia is pregnant, and aiming to move, but not quite getting there. 


3. Tricia is moving to get her missing husband declared legally dead after seven years.  A lawyer and Ryan help her with this.  Callie helps push.


4. While those factors are in play, Callie has been out running; she often goes through a tunnel under the freeway.  She has some odd encounters there.  About the same time, Tricia starts hallucinating her dead husband's presence.  Her shrink helps her deal with this.  After (probably stolen) objects are dumped on the welcome mat, Callie returns them to the tunnel.  Later, she finds twice as much in her futon.  The women discuss this with the police.


5. Callie and Tricia find another place; Tricia starts dating her baby's father, Ryan, openly.


6. As the first date was about to start, Daniel shows up.  Ryan sees him, Callie sees him, Tricia sees him.


7. The police and the hospital figure out that he has been eating animals, including bones.  His memory is shot.  Callie tries to connect with him, as does Ryan.  Tricia, of course, is hurricane level angry. Ryan makes his case as a better mate than the current version of Daniel--the death certificate is accurate, metaphorically speaking.


8. Daniel speaks with Callie, describing the monster that enslaved him for years. Daniel tells her that he wished that Callie had not bartered with it (the food, the trinkets she returned) since the monster fixates.  Then wham, the monster takes him back and drags him into the tunnel, and absorbs him into the wall.


9. Unfortunately, while this happened, Callie was high, and the police noticed it, as did Tricia.


10. The last half hour is about dealing with Daniel being gone again.  The energy for the search is heightened by the existence of other missing persons cases associated with the same tunnel.  Callie helps highlight this, but faces rough sledding convincing anyone.  Tricia has to deal with Daniel's parents.  The cops get a little traction in the matter, but not a whole lot.


3. Conclusions
1. One line summary: Michael Flanagan's next movie might be worth watching if he has a much bigger budget.
2. Final Rating: 6/10.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 7/10 The camera work is often top notch. At other times, it is just bush league, so I assume this is a (bad) conscious choice.


2. Sound: 8/10 Fairly good. Seldom drops out.  The background sounds are sometimes irritating.


3. Acting: 7/10 Reasonably good. The two women leads were much better than I expected, and I liked the actors who played the two detectives.


4. Screenplay: 8/10 Has a beginning, middle, and an end.  I had no problems with exposition of motivation.  The technical scores point to a four out of five rating, but the film has no significance for me.  I read about 20 reviews of it, by people who clearly watched the same movie I did.  There tended to be a lot of energy in the reviews from those who gave it high ratings and from those who gave it low.  I could not agree with either group; it's just not that interesting.


5. Special Effects: 7/10 Not very many of them, which a low budget necessitates. No spectacular gaffes that I noticed.