January Positivity: Mercy Streets (dir by Jon Gunn)

Posted on January 11, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

2000’s Mercy Streets is a strange film.

Two twin brothers, John and Jeremiah, grew up in a series of terrible group homes. One night, John fell off a bridge and Jeremiah failed to rescue him from the water below. Jeremiah was convinced that John drowned. Wracked with guilt, Jeremiah turned his life around. He became an upstanding citizen and, as an adult, he’s an Episcopal deacon who is just a few weeks away from being ordained. His girlfriend (Cynthia Watros) loves him but can tell that he’s not always open with her about his past and his emotions.

What Jeremiah doesn’t know is that John did not drown. He survived and grew up to be a career criminal. Having spent the last few years in jail, he tracks down his mentor, Rome (Eric Roberts), as soon as he’s released. (That’s right! This is an Eric Roberts film!) Rome wants John to help him out with a scheme involving counterfeit money. John decides to grab the money and run. When Rome can’t catch John, he decides to abduct Jeremiah instead.

Meanwhile, John takes over Jeremiah’s life. Pretending to be his brother, John fixes Jeremiah’s relationship with his girlfriend and he even proves to be better at delivering sermons than Jeremiah, despite the fact that John is not religious at all. While Jeremiah gets a crash course in how to be a counterfeiter, John learns how to be an upstanding member of society.

Of course, it doesn’t last. Jeremiah eventually escapes from Rome and finds himself on the streets, where he struggles to not fall into the same criminal lifestyle that previously captured his brother. Fortunately, Jeremiah runs into a priest named Tom (Stacy Keach), who offers some good advice. Meanwhile, John learns about the importance of forgiveness and redemption and discovers that Jeremiah has spent his entire life mourning the brother who he thought was dead.

Mercy Streets is an odd mix of religion and action. On the one hand, the film features David A.R. White playing two brothers who feel like they could have walked out of one of his wholesome Pureflix movies. (White, while being a decent actor, is not exactly the most believable hardened criminal that I’ve ever seen.) On the other hand, you’ve got Eric Roberts teaching Jeremiah how to be a criminal and basically taking over the entire film whenever he’s onscreen. (The scene where Rome teaches Jeremiah how to pass fake money is surprisingly well-acted and directed.) The movie runs into the same problem that plagued many a DeMille production. The heroes may all be Godly but the sinners appear to be having more fun. That said, this film at least reminds us of what a good actor Eric Roberts can be when he’s got a decent role.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

The Eric Roberts Collection: Bonnie And Clyde: Justified (dir by David DeCoteau)

Posted on January 7, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

2013’s Bonnie and Clyde: Justified opens with a long-haired Eric Roberts introducing himself as legendary Texas Ranger Frank Hamer. Speaking straight to the camera, Roberts-as-Hamer warns us against idolizing the notorious Depression-era outlaws Bonnie and Clyde. They were murderers!, Hamer tells us with all the fervor of a tent revival preacher.

We then flashback to Bonnie (Ashley Hayes) and Clyde (Jim Poole) driving down a country road. Clyde is behind the wheel. Bonnie, a redhead like me!, reads aloud her latest poem about what it’s like to be a notorious outlaw. Suddenly, Hamer and his men appear on the roadside and open fire.

We then start yet another flashback. 15 year-old Bonnie marries good-for-nothing Roy (Julian Brand) while Clyde and his brother Buck (Hagen Mills) steal a truck full of turkeys. Jump forward to 1929 and Bonnie is unhappily married and working in a diner that we’re told is in Dallas, Texas. Oddly enough, there’s a lot of mountains in the background. I live in North Texas and I can assure you that, as much as things have changed here over the past few years, one thing has always remained the same. There are no mountains in Dallas County.

Eventually, Bonnie meets Clyde, they fall in love, and they rob banks. At least, that’s what we’re told. The majority of the film is told through sepia-toned still shots and newspaper headlines. Clyde attempts to escape from prison but we don’t actually see him do it. Instead, we just see a headline. Bonnie and Clyde rob banks but, again, we don’t really see it as much as we hear about it. Even when people die during the robberies, we don’t really learn the exact circumstances that led to Clyde opening fire. Ashley Hayes actually gives a good performance as Bonnie and her scrappy interpretation of the character is probably closer to the truth than Faye Dunaway’s. As for Jim Poole, he’s much better-looking than the real Clyde Barrow and that’s a good thing. Who wants to watch an ugly bank robber? There’s a reason why my distant-relation Pretty Boy Floyd remains a legend. As for the title, you may be wondering what exactly was justified about Bonnie and Clyde. You can argue that they were justified in doing what they had to do in order to survive during the Great Depression. Or you can argue that Frank Hamer was justified in ambushing them. Or you can assume the film was trying to appeal to (or perhaps just tricks) fans of the Justified television series. Or you can just not worry about it.

This is the story of Bonnie and Clyde on a budget. It came out in 2013, presumably to coincide with a 4-hour Bonnie and Clyde miniseries that was airing on A&E at the time. To be honest, you have to respect the nerve of a film about Bonnie and Clyde that doesn’t actually feature much of them doing what they were famous for. Cheers to director David DeCoteau for sticking with it and giving Eric Roberts top-billing for a cameo appearance. And cheers to Eric Roberts for just being Eric Roberts.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

Lifetime Movie Review: The Wrong Life Coach (dir by David DeCoteau)

Posted on January 3, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 2024’s The Wrong Life Coach, Morgan Bradley stars as Jordan Roberts, whose popularity as a high school cheerleader did little to prepare her for the pressures of adult life. Her career is going nowhere. Her boss (Vivica A. Fox) does not respect her. Her boyfriend (Hector David, Jr.) is bored with her and their vanilla sex life. Her mother (Tracy Nelson) is living with her and trying to control her life. Jordan needs someone to help her get her life together. She needs a life coach!

(Personally, I’ve never gotten the whole life coach thing but whatever. Apparently, it works for some people.)

A chance meeting with Liz Kimble (Allison McAtee) changes Jordan’s life. Though Jordan doesn’t really remember her, she and Liz went to high school together. And it turns out that Liz is now a life coach! Soon, Liz is encouraging Jordan to take sexy pictures, demand more from her career, and to stand up to her domineering mother!

At first, it all seems perfect. Except …. Liz is not a certified life coach! She’s just repeating a bunch of stuff that she heard from her own life coach, Rhonda (Meredith Thomas). It may sound like the start of a hilarious comedy but it turns out that Liz is a little bit crazy. Liz has never gotten over losing her spot on the cheerleading squad to Jordan and now, she’s determined to get revenge,

In quick order, Jordan loses her job, her relationship with her mother, and nearly her boyfriend as well! Plus, her best friend has gone missing! After Jordan tells Liz to get lost, Liz begins to obsessively stalk Jordan. What Jordan doesn’t know is that Liz has placed hidden cameras all over her house and she’s even hacked into Jordan’s email. Jordan thinks that she’s had a good job interview with Mr. Gordon. (Hey, it’s Eric Roberts!) But remember those lingerie-clad photos that Liz encouraged Jordan to send to her boyfriend? Well, those pictures end up getting sent to Mr. Gordon as well.

“I couldn’t hire you if I wanted to,” Mr. Gordon says. When even Eric Roberts refuses to work with you, you know you’ve asked the wrong person for advice!

“Girl, you listened the wrong life coach.”

She sure did!

I love the Lifetime “Wrong” films. The Wrong Life Coach is a tremendous amount of fun, from Allison McAtee’s over-the-top performance as Liz to the side-eye that Vivica A. Fox gives Jordan every time she makes a mistake. As always, with the “Wrong” films, director David DeCoteau fully embraces the melodrama and creates a film that’s so ludicrous that you can’t help but love it. Any director could make a film about a crazy life coach. But only David DeCoteau has the courage to have that life coach make her diabolical plans while wearing her old high school cheerleader uniform.

Watching this film reminded me of how much I love Lifetime and its demented films. I look forward to reviewing a lot more of them in 2025!

Hopefully, more than a few of them will feature Eric Roberts!

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

The Eric Roberts Collection: Enemy Within (dir by Damian Chapa)

Posted on January 1, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I swear, the crap that I watch just because it features Eric Roberts….

2016’s Enemy Within takes place in Los Angeles. A drug war is being fought on the streets and the local news is full of stories about violence, immigration, and the presidential election. Born in Italy, Concetta Masconi (Romina Di Lella) has come to Los Angeles to be a dancer and has ended up working as a stripper at a club owned by Jack (Eric Roberts).

When Concetta is attacked by an axe-wielding maniac, she is nearly raped until the sound of an approaching siren scares her attacker away. With Detective Solano (William McNamara) investigating the case and another detective named Nick (Damian Chapa) looking out for her, Concetta continues to date Max (Paulo Benedeti), despite the fact that Max has a history of abusing women and he’s the number one suspect in her own attack. Solano yells that Concetta is not taking any of this seriously. Little does he know that Concetta has been suffering from slow motion, black-and-white flashbacks.

When Concetta is attacked for a second time, she goes into hiding with a group of Latino gangsters. But can even they protect her from her attacker?

So, this is a pretty bad movie. It was obviously meant to be a showcase for Romina Di Lella but whatever hope she may have had of giving a good performance is pretty much sabotaged by a script that is full of confusing motivations and truly risible dialogue. Along with being poorly paced (certain scenes just go on forever!), the film itself is just truly unpleasant to watch. The rapes scenes were filmed to titillate and the inclusion of some light S&M feels less daring and more like an attempt to trick the 50 Shades crowd into watching. I’ve seen a lot of bad films in my quest to see every movie that Eric Roberts has made. This is one of the worst.

As for Roberts’s performance, he gets a few more scenes than usual and he does a good enough job with his one-dimensional role but his character still turns out to be a red herring. Roberts brings a few moments of intentional comedy to the film but otherwise, it’s a role that almost anyone could have played. In his autobiography, Eric Roberts wrote that he largely appears in films like this for the money. Hopefully, he got paid for this one.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

Book Review: Runaway Train Or, The Story Of My Life So Far by Eric Roberts with Sam Kasher

Posted on October 4, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Hell yeah, Eric Roberts has written a book!

A friend of mine recently sent me Eric Roberts’s just published autobiography as a gift. I was excited because, as any of our regular readers know, I am a huge fan of the insanely busy Eric Roberts. That said, I wasn’t really expecting much from the book because most Hollywood autobiographies that I’ve read have had a tendency to be a bit dry. Often times, the author (or their ghost writer, as the case may be) is either too concerned about not offending anyone or too bitter about the state of their career to really provide much honest insight into their life or their chosen profession.

Eric Roberts, however, is the exception to the rule. Runaway Train is a fascinating read. Roberts comes across as being very honest about his career, his demons, his family, and his compulsive need to always be working. Roberts admits to being a workaholic but, as he explains it, it’s better to be addicted to acting than to be addicted to cocaine. And I have to say that I think he has a point there.

Roberts writes about his dysfunctional childhood, his time as a star, and his more recent career as an actor who is willing to appear in just about everything. He writes about his addictions and how they almost ruined his life. He writes about his marriage to Eliza and fully takes responsibility for all the times that he’s screwed up. (Roberts screwing up is a recurring theme throughout the book, almost to the extent that you just want to give the guy a hug and tell him to stop being so hard on himself.) He writes about the time that he spent as a patient of Dr. Drew on Celebrity Rehab. (In perhaps the book’s funniest moment, he realizes that he needs to be addicted to something if he’s going to go on Celebrity Rehab. Eventually, he agrees to go on the show for help with his marijuana addiction, despite Roberts belief, which I agree with, that you can’t actually get addicted to marijuana.) Roberts writes about some of his films, though he obviously can’t write about all 700 of them. So, while there is no Top Gunner trivia, there are three pretty interesting chapters devoted to Star 80, The Pope of Greenwich Village, and Runaway Train.

Roberts does write about other celebrities, though he does so in a way that is neither petty nor obsequious. He writes about his friendship with Robin Williams with an honesty that few other celebs would be willing to risk. Danny Trejo, Eddie Bunker, Mickey Rourke, Christopher Walken, Sterling Hayden, Doug Kenney, Sharon Stone, Rod Steiger, and Sylvester Stallone all show up at one point or another. And yes, Eric Roberts does write about his relationship with both his sister Julia and his daughter, Emma. Eric is open about he and Julia having been occasionally estranged but he manages to do so in a way that protects everyone’s privacy. One might never expect this from some of the roles that he’s played but Eric Roberts comes across as being a pretty classy, if somewhat eccentric, guy.

I loved this memoir. I recommend it to all of you.

The Eric Roberts Collection: Wolves of Wall Street (dir by David DeCoteau)

Posted on October 1, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

2002’s Wolves of Wall Street tells a story of high finance and lycanthropy.

Jeff Allen (William Gregory Lee) dreams of being a rich and successful stockbroker but he runs into a huge problem when he tries to find a job on Wall Street. No one is willing to hire him without experience and he can’t get any experience because no one is willing to hire him. A sympathetic bartender named Annabella (Elisa Donovan) tells him to apply for Wolfe Brothers and she even promises to put in a good word for him. Annabella, as we soon learn, has a very powerful friend at Wolfe Brothers.

Jeff is given an internship with Wolfe Brothers and, after a week, he’s offered a job by the head of the firm, Dyson Keller (Eric Roberts). Jeff not only has his dream job but he’s also convinced the initially reluctant Annabella to date him. However, it soon becomes obvious that there are some strange things going on at Wolfe Brothers. The brokers spend a lot time talking about the importance of working as a “pack” and about how they are all kin now. At the end of the week, they hold wild but ritualized parties with prostitutes and neck biting. Jeff is told that he’s not allowed to have any outside interests. He life now revolves around Wolfe Brothers and that means that everything he has also belongs to his bosses. Afterall, they’re the Alphas….

As you’ve probably already guessed, Jeff is working with a bunch of werewolves!

They’re not your usual werewolves. Though they howl at the moon and enjoy biting strangers and they can pick up on scents and pheromones, they don’t actually seem to turn into wolves. And while I’m sure that the lack of dramatic transformation scenes was probably a budget thing, it actually makes the film all the more effective. It leaves you to wonder if the brokers are really werewolves or if they’re just people who have been brainwashed into accepting the Wolfe Brothers lifestyle. In this film, being a werewolf becomes the equivalent of being in a cult.

Eric Roberts makes for a wonderfully sinister cult leader, though I should note that there is a pretty big twist involving his character that I didn’t see coming. With his smirk of a smile and his friendly but nervous manner, Roberts gives a wonderfully sinister performance and, even with limited screentime, he elevates the entire film. Wolves of Wall Street is a wonderfully pulpy and sordid B-movie and one of director David DeCoteau’s best.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

The Films of 2024: Scars (dir by Shaun Kosta)

Posted on May 18, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

A young man named Eric (Allen Williamson) enlists as a combat medic and is sent to Afghanistan. Eric truly thinks that he’s going to help to make the world a better place but, what he sees and experiences in Afghanistan, leaves him shaken and haunted by memories of the dead and wounded.

Upon returning home, Eric tries to keep himself busy helping his family’s winery recover from the latest round of California wildfires but he still finds himself tormented by his experiences. Suffering from PTSD, Eric discovers that his country is more than willing to send young men overseas to fight but it’s less willing to provide them with the support that they need when they return. With the help of his mother (Elizabeth Gast), his girlfriend (Cayla Black), and a fellow veteran (Stephen Wesley Green), Eric tries to find his place in the world.

Scars is an undeniably low-budget film. If you’re looking for a war film that is full of epic battle scenes and which will leave you feeling as if you actually are in the middle of Afghanistan, Scars is not the film to go with. Indeed, it took me a while to realize that Eric was in Afghanistan because Afghanistan looked exactly like California. As well, towards the end of the film, there’s a few moments of clumsy melodrama that feel as if they were added solely so that this rather talky film could be sold as a thriller.

But you know what? In the end, those flaws don’t matter. Scars is a heartfelt film, featuring an excellent lead performance from Allen Williamson, playing a man who is burdened by guilt but who never lets go of hope. Scars is a film about the pain that people carry with them and the struggle that men like Eric have when it comes to opening up about that pain. (Not all of the scars in the film are physical.) It’s an indictment of a society that, far too often, pushes the needs of veterans to the side. That’s especially true if that veteran served in an unpopular war, like the ones in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Considering that we still don’t know how many people were left behind when we left Afghanistan, Scars is a film that feels all too relevant.

And yes, Eric Roberts is in Scars. Playing a sympathetic doctor, he has about a minute of screentime towards the end of the film. It’s always a good idea to put your Eric Roberts cameo at the end of your movie, just to make sure that audiences stick around for the entire film.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

The Eric Roberts Collection: The Rebels of PT-218 (dir by Nick Lyon)

Posted on May 8, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 2021 film, The Rebels of PT-218, takes place in 1943.

At the height of World War II, the Allies are on the verge of invading Italy and moving into Europe. General Omar Bradley (played by William Baldwin, who looks like Alec but sounds like Stephen) orders the SS Lawton, a small torpedo boat to help secure the port of Solano. It won’t be easy. The Atlantic Ocean is full of German U-boats and the Lawton is built to move cargo, not fight battles. But the Lawton is still the most powerful boat in the area and General Bradley believes in the abilities of the Lawton’s commander, Lt. William Snow (Eric Roberts).

However, Snow is eager to get into combat and defeat the Germans. In fact, he’s so gung ho to fight that some of Bradley’s assistants feel that Lt. Snow’s judgment can’t be trusted. Commander Barnes (Noah Blake) tells Ensign Kenneth Ford (Geoff Meed) to keep an eye on Snow and do everything he can to keep Lt. Snow on track.

The men of the SS Lawton, meanwhile, just want to man the guns, launch the torpedoes, and stop the Germans. They’re from all over the United States but they’ll be familiar to anyone who has ever seen a war film. Some of them are naive. Some of them are cocky and streetwise. One of them is played by Danny Trejo! Trejo plays Cookie, a former gunner turned cook. He delights in serving chorizos for dinner. Cookie has a mustache and a pony tail, which definitely do not feel like they would be within Navy regulations. After Cookie is wounded in action, a crewman tosses Cookie a machete and Trejo smiles like a man who has waited his entire life for that exact moment.

Historical accuracy? Who needs historical accuracy when you’ve got Danny Trejo and Eric Roberts in the same movie? Obviously, both Roberts and Trejo are a bit too old for their roles. Cookie would have probably retired from the Navy long before the bombing of Pearl Harbor. As for Roberts, one has to worry about any officer who is clearly in his 70s and still hasn’t achieved a rank higher than lieutenant. When Snow expresses his ambition to be promoted, you have to wonder if he’s hoping to be the world’s oldest admiral.

This film is an attempt to do an epic war story on a budget and it doesn’t quite work. One never feels that any of the characters are waking up everyday with the knowledge that this could be the day that they die. The ship and all of the characters are remarkably clean and fresh-faced throughout the film, with none of the grime nor grit that would have given the story a realistic edge. That said, Danny Trejo gets a few good lines and it’s always fun to watch Eric Roberts play an authority figure. In the end, the important thing is that America won.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

The Eric Roberts Collection: The Savant (dir by Sherri Kauk)

Posted on May 1, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I swear, I will sit through the worst films for the promise of an Eric Roberts cameo.

Roberts is only featured in about two minutes of 2019’s The Savant. According to the credits, he was playing a character named Lonnie. At one point, he called the film’s hero, police officer Nick Tantino (Frank Giglio), and had a nonsensical conversation with him while he was arresting a random person. I’m not really sure who Lonnie was supposed to be and the scene had very little to do with the film’s story. In fact, the scene just randomly occurred. I’m going to guess that the film needed to be padded out and someone said, “Let’s call Eric Roberts and add another name to the cast.”

Eric Roberts is not the only familiar face to show up in the film.

Martin Kove plays a literature professor who is also a sensei. One of his former students, an evil District Attorney named Zane Carroll (played by Eric Etebari), calls him for advice.

Former TV actress Joyce DeWitt plays a detective. Her partner, who tells a lot of bad jokes, is played by comedian and former Howard Stern flunky, Jackie Martling.

Veteran genre actress Julie McCullough plays a judge, who screams at a defense attorney.

Thomas G. Waites, who was one of The Warriors, plays a police chief.

Robert Loggia shows up as Dr. Reno, a psychiatrist who bellows at everyone and who explains how the savant mind works. Of all the “names” in the film, Loggia gets the most screentime. Interestingly enough, Loggia died in 2015 and The Savant was released four years later. I’m not sure when The Savant was actually filmed but considering how messy the film is and how many plot points are brought up and then abandoned and also the fact that the characters often look totally different from scene-to-scene, I’m going to guess shooting went on for a while.

As for the film, it’s about an autistic savant named Anthony (Miguel Jarquin-Moreland) who beats up a bully. Nick, who has been assigned to work as a glorified security guard at Anthony’s high school, takes Anthony under his wing and trains him to be a MMA fighter. It turns out that the secret of communicating with Anthony is to speak to him in Spanish so we get several scenes of Nick calling him a “pendejo” in order to get Anthony to fight. The entire film builds up to a cage match between Anthony and his bully just for Nick to suddenly cancel the match and instead enter the ring to fight Zane, who is not just a district attorney but also the sensei of his own karate school.

Zane is determined to not only defeat Nick in the ring but to also destroy Nick’s career by telling the police about the time that Nick killed two men in Italy. The murders are not in the record because, according to Zane, they happened “before we had international law.” What? Anyway, Zane decides to create a false criminal record for Nick because Zane is jealous over the fact that Nick is falling in love with Anthony’s sister, a defense attorney named Cassy (Suzy Kaye). Zane even sleeps with Nick’s ex-wife to get revenge. Seriously, I love the fact that Zane is both a prosecutor and a sensei. I mean, how does he find the time?

There’s a lot of plot in this movie. None of it really makes sense but it’s hard not be amused at just how incoherent it all is. The film is full of random and seemingly unrelated scenes, like a lengthy sequence where a defense attorney argues that his client, a doctor, was performing euthanasia when he shot three heroin addicts in the head. “Free Dr. Clark!” the courtroom crowd chants. (Of course, Dr. Clark is never again mentioned after this scene. The shouts of “Free Dr. Clark” brought to mind the “Free Hat!” episode of South Park.) The Savant plays out like a fever dream, one that dares you to try to make sense of it all.

Well, good luck with that. I could sit here and spending hours write about all of the film’s plot holes. But what’s important is that this film featured a lot of Robert Loggia yelling and about two minutes of Eric Roberts. Plan accordingly.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

Film Review: Aftermath (dir by Jozsef Gallai and Gergö Elekes)

Posted on January 9, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

A woman named Kate (Fruzsina Nagy) drives down a road. We don’t know where she is driving to but we can tell that she’s driving quickly and she’s not in the mood for any delays. It’s the way that someone drives when they’re trying to escape but they’re not sure where they want to go. It’s way you drive when you just want to convince yourself that you can somehow leave everything behind.

We hear what sounds like an accident and suddenly, Kate is waking up in a forest. Her car is nowhere to be seen and Kate has no idea how she came to be in the forest. In fact, she’s not even sure who she was before she woke up. She has no memories of her past life, beyond fleeting visions that don’t always seem to fit together. Eventually, she meets another apparent amnesiac, Bubba (Edward Apeagyei). Bubba wears a locket around his neck and there’s a picture of a woman in the locket but he doesn’t seem to be quite sure who she was.

Bubba and Kate are not alone in the forest. There are other wanderers and then there’s a group of men who appear to be soldiers, wearing crude uniforms and gas masks and carrying machine guns. (The sight of the soldiers, with their crude uniforms, bring to mind the horrific militias that often spring up in the aftermath of a war and attempt to seize power out of the chaos.) Receiving cryptic orders from their leader (Eric Roberts), the soldiers patrol the forest and execute anyone that they come across. Their leader repeatedly tells them that they have to track down and execute everyone because the future of the world depends upon it. Failure is not an option.

Aftermath deals with a very real fear. The idea of suddenly waking up and discovering that you have not only lost your identity but also control over your own fate is at the heart of many horror stories and it’s also a reflection of the way many people feel about living in today’s world. One wrong word, thought, or move and you can find yourself exiled into both a real and metaphorical wilderness. When Kate wakes up with little memory of what the world was like before she ended up in that forest, she’s feeling what a lot of people have felt when they try to remember the world and their lives before the lockdowns of 2020 and all of the political and societal events that followed. We live in a world that seems to change from day to day and, as result, everyone has had that moment when, like Kate, they’ve struggled to understand what’s happening. From the minute that Kate wakes up with the feeling that she has no control over what’s happening to her, she becomes an instantly relatable character. The audience not only wants to know what’s happening to her but they also want her to regain control of her fate. If Kate can regain control, then those watching in the audience can also regain control.

The film’s cinematography emphasizes both the grandeur and the ominous atmosphere of the forest, making it a place that manages to be beautiful and threatening at the same time and the deliberate pace builds up suspense as Kate tries to discover why she is in the forest. Fruzsina Nagy and Edward Apeagyei both give sympathetic and relatable performances as Kate and Bubba and the audience does care what happens to them. Aftermath is both an intriguing thriller and a meditation on life and love.

Aftermath will be released on digital and blu-ray by Bayview Entertainment on January 30th.