REVIEW: Reunion

Published September 3, 2015 | By Folklore

Review by- GREEN MAN

Take the 1990 movie Misery, squeeze in a little bit of Psycho’s parenting issues, and swap the cast with a handful of pretty 20-somethings - and you have Reunion. A melodramatic thriller that ultimately fails to fill its 90-minute shoes. This film has an excellent score, good production values, and wouldn’t look out of place on the Hallmark Channel, which is really this film’s natural home. A bit more disciplined editing of the flashbacks, and of the lingering close-ups on those so-cute lead actors, and you’d have a film half the length, but twice as good.

Aspiring L.A. -rocker Brad, played by Jack Turner, gets a second shot at the big time and calls over his musical partner in crime to hang out and jam a little, as girlfriend and nurse Carly, played by Sarah Schreiber, struggles to juggle her work at a mental hospital, and her personal life. Brad and Carly have great chemistry and can certainly act, but they are scarcely given the opportunity to show us their professional chops as the director is forever reaching for just one more close-up of a sweaty brow, or cute upturned nose.

Carly is a regular Florence Nightingale, and rushes off at the drop of a hat through the rain in the middle of the night back to the mental hospital … where she hyperventilates attractively as one of the patients (Maria Olsen) creeps up on her from behind and stabs her with a syringe. Needless to say the patient, a middle-aged lady with (spoiler alert) bad teeth, has hidden depths as she proceeds to turn up on Brad’s doorstep and initiate a reign of pain. There’s also a British stripper to help get this party started, but you just know (spoiler alert) that it ain’t going to end well for her - foreign slut!

Just when you think we might be approaching moments of blood-soaked catharsis, we’re frequently yanked off to the past as progressively more of the backstory is filled in. I hope you’re sitting down: it seems that Brad’s early years were not as idyllic as they could have been. Turns out his Dad regularly beat up on Mum, before Mum cooked up a big bowl of boiling whoop-arse for Dad. Frankly, I don’t really care - just take me back to the painful mental-patient-on-the-loose present, please.

Not only do the 20-somethings look good, but their characters are able to soak up impressive amounts of amputation, injection, hammers to the skull, axe blows and knife stabbing before expiring beautifully, their hairdos intact.

The plot waters are somewhat muddied by the suggestion that Brad is as much of a fruit-loop as the middle-aged ninja from the mental hospital stalking him through his house. They seem to share the same voice in their heads taunting them to do something wacky - like, well, KILL EVERYBODY!

That’s pretty much where we should leave it - keeping a few burning questions flaming away like will-o-the-wisps above the narrative quicksand: Who is the psycho ninja? How does the British stripper die? Why can’t four healthy adults take down one old aunty? And of course … will there be time for one final, lingering close-up of that pert nose, and those furrowed brows?