It's unfortunate that the current theatre going experience seems to be only saturated with big budget comic book adaptations, lame romantic comedies, or films graced with the presence of CGI anthropomorphic lions. Just some days it's great to get away from the big multiplexes with the barrage of previews and commercials that precede the film and heading out to your local art house dive where you can see a well crafted. That might just be the medicine worth taking. Enter The Deed to Hell.
Long Island independent filmmaker Glenn Andreiev has created a film not with a single narrative, but instead takes the approach of multiple character stories and then interweaving them at the end. Lynell Campbell (Shawna Bermender) is determined to get revenge on heavy metal rocker Zad Zolock for drugging one of of her friends. A husband and wife (Roy Frumkes and Wendy Marquez) are facing a marital discord stemming from the wife's struggle to create a perfect family. She is reminisicent of Mary Tyler Moore from Ordinary People. Two men rob a million dollars, leading to one of the men betraying the other. It leaves one man wounded (Frank Franconeri) and the other (Glenn Andreiev) hiding out in Europe. Eventually the lives of all these people come together for their own unique trip to Hell.
It's great to see a little film with such a big heart. It succeeds in the areas that many other low budget films tend to fail in. With low budget films, performances can either be really good or really bad. There isn't a middle ground. The acting by the performers in the film is top notch. I get a lot of motivation and feeling from each of the protagonists (or antagonists depending on how you view main characters). Shawna Bermender feeds her character with hate for Zolock, but yet despite her actions, you feel sorry for her and that does come into play at the end. She is not an evil person, but a scorned woman who feels that she only has one way of dealing with Zolock. Many of the other actors are first time performers and you would not be able to guess that. None of them under or over act their performances, something that trained actors do quite often. Instead they each bring their own unique nuances to the characters they play. But the one who steals the show is Roy Frumkes as Vince Cataco, the cheating husband. His face speaks wonders when he is dealing with his stubborn wife putting him down or yelling at him. It is both funny in a tragic way and tragic in a humorous way.
Something this film does really well is the merging of three different genres. You got a heist, a thriller, and a family drama all rolled into one movie and they interweave so fluidly. Many films that take this approach get it wrong. A lot of them have one story which is given priority over the others, the stories do not seem to fit, or all three stories are just plain bad. But each story in this film is given an adequate amount of time to flesh itself out and nothing feels rushed or overdrawn.
However, the most intriguing aspect of the film is its vision of Hell. Ever since Dante's Inferno, people have been mystified of what Hell must be. Is it a place where fire and brimstone burn the flesh away from your body, is it having to relive your most painful memories, or is it ruled by a demon who is having a homosexual affair with Saddam Hussein? The film's interpretation of Hell is unique, and I don't want to give too much away on it. I'll just say, it is creepy and extremely gory.
According to the Internet Movie Database, the budget is estimated to be around $70,000. You would not guess that from watching the film. Locations from Long Island to Greece are used as the backdrop of this film and nothing is against a blue-screen as far as I can tell. And if anything was, I was fooled. A bigger budget film would have filmed in Canada for the tax breaks, but the film has an authenticity to it that is missing from most films. Nothing seems "fake" in that CGI or some trickery was used to for the location shootings.
I had the pleasure of seeing this film at an early morning screening at my local art house cinema. It is refreshing to see a film that is pure guerrilla film making. I hope the film is picked up by a good distributor and can release it so others at some point can enjoy it as much as I did. To put it in a food perspective, seeing all those blockbuster films would be akin to eating candy everyday. Not a lot of people can live on candy only. Sometimes you got to pick the fresh fruit to keep yourself in balance.
Verdict: 8/10
