Anderson

*Be Advised there will be spoilers in this review*

A Detective believes his wife was murdered and didn’t commit suicide. As he investigates, he discovers it’s a team, a father and son, who are killing women and staging them as suicides….

While in London for FrightFest, the trailer for Anderson Falls played a few times. Based on the trailer, I thought it looked a very generic thriller, one not really of interest. When it was announced among the line-up for FrightFest Glasgow, I decided I’d skip it. I was done with serial killers murdering women in films. However at the Glasgow screening, there was a problem with the performance and as a result the film was delayed until later in the day, the final film of the event.

I now had a decision to make. Do I watch the film, despite my own reservations or go see A Night Of Horror: Nightmare Radio. As I heard mixed things about that film, I decided to go see Anderson Falls.

I wish I hadn’t.

The film opens with the murder of a woman, where we see her being fed sleeping tablets before the killers take her into the bathroom to stage her death. It’s a truly uncomfortable, unsettling scene to watch, which I’m sure was the intention. However, to see a woman, meekly give up, rather than fight for her and her son’s life was frankly ridiculous. The killers said they will kill her son if she doesn’t do what they ask, but I would imagine any woman would fight them, to try and save him, as she has no reason to believe they will let him live. But she gives in and they kill her.

Her husband is a police detective. In perhaps a rare occurrence, she wasn’t killed to get at him, she was killed because she was successful. Of course, him being a Detective, after his son mentions seeing a man in his room that night, he believes right away she was murdered, despite no evidence to the contrary. And so he begins to investigate all manner of suicides. until he receives word of one that looks like his wife’s, only the victim survived. Of course, now he is believed, but being a film, there are no officers to help him hunt the killers down, so he has to do it all himself.

And what follows is an insult to very cop film you can think of. To get inside the killer’s head, he starts shouting ‘I hate you’ at pictures of women, including his wife, he believes may have been killed by the same team. It’s one of the many ridiculous moments in this film. When he compiles a list of women he believes the killers might go after, again his boss and former partner, can’t give any assistance. It should be pointed out, he works out all the victims are successful women and you would think SOMEONE SOMEWHERE would have noticed a pattern long before this!

So the solution is clear, he, Detective Anderson, will stakeout (or stalk) each of the women on the list hoping to catch the killers. As a plan it is ridiculous. But worse is to follow. He gets a phone call from his boss, saying a woman has reported that she thinks she is being stalked by someone in his car. Anderson’s response, ‘What’s that got to do with me?’

‘What’s that got to do with me?’ The response of a DETECTIVE HUNTING KILLERS OF WOMEN TO A REPORT THAT A WOMAN THINKS SHE IS BEING STALKED! FFS!

Anyway.

He spots the killers entering a house of a potential victim, one he is conveniently sitting outside and rushes inside. In the opening scene, we see it takes time for the pills to work on his wife. Here though, despite following them in quickly, they have already worked and they have the victim in the bathtub. They threaten to shoot the victim unless he drops his gun. So he does. Now, when the victim earlier in the film survived, her boyfriend was shot as he came back. But here, the film has them not kill the one interrupting right away, because, well because he’s the hero, isn’t he?

Anyway, the father is captured, his son escapes. And what follows insults the intelligence of the audience watching to such a degree, hitting myself with a board would have been preferable.

The son abducts Anderson’s son, resulting in Anderson helping the father escape, which brings about the death of his Captain. As they have a discussion in the car they have taken, the Captain’s car, the killer’s son decides to give Anderson’s son a sleeping pill, which of course he doesn’t take.

The film then leads to a finale as a father fights for his son, while a son fights to avenge his father.

I’ve gone into the plot more than I normally would. I feel I have too, as many of this films problems stem from its writing. It’s written by Giles Daoust and his script is riddled with cliches and some of the worst dialogue I’ve come across in some time.

That might be forgiven, if not this film’s attitude to women.

From the opening murder, where the victim gives in too easily, to Anderson’s mother, who turns in a split second from angry with her son for not moving on, to telling him to catch the killers, to his former partner now by the book captain, the film clearly doesn’t know what to do with the female characters or how to write them. The father and son killing team are punishing successful women (who it turns out are too weak to fight back), but really the victims are an afterthought, as the film is more interested in fathers and sons, not the women in their lives. Women are not important except as victims. They don’t matter in this film at all.

I mentioned earlier how I was done with serial killers and female victims. One of the problems is that it doesn’t even try to present the victims as anything other a disposable characters to drive the plot. they make no effort to make you care about them. Of course, the films often want you to care about the police officers, usually male, who hunt them, but the victims? Nope.

In a period of things like #MeToo, that we are still getting trash like this is insulting. You can make good, intelligent serial killer films, like The Silence Of The Lambs, or Se7en, or Copycat, but those films tend to not linger on the violence. Watching two men overpower and kill a woman is no longer entertainment. Certainly not without making you care for the victim, you do that, you might, MIGHT have a chance, but making them characters to suffer to drive the plot? I thought we were done with that.

But it appears for some writers and directors, we aren’t.

The film has actors like Lin Shaye, Gary Cole Shawn Ashmore and clearly the film has a decent budget, which in some ways makes it more depressing that they are still greenlighting films like this. The writer Giles Daoust is also a producer (which may explain why it was made). The film is directed by Julien Seri and to be fair, slightly, it’s not badly directed. The score for the film feels like rejected pieces from a Hans Zimmer wannabe.

You could, perhaps, argue that because I wasn’t keen on the film beforehand, that it is clouding my judgement. It might be a fair point. But even allowing for that, I still expect something better than cliched ridden drivel.

It’s a thriller that isn’t thrilling. There is nothing, absolutely nothing here to recommend. I wish I could unsee this film.

There was a woman, Jen, sitting near me, who I think was more entertained by my reactions to events in the film than the film itself. I hope it helped her get through the film.

I have never walked out of a film at the cinema, until it is finished. Even bad ones. But there are times I hate myself for staying. Anderson Falls is one of those times. It’s not just bad, it made me angry. Very few films get me that angry. I’m still angry about the film.

It’s not just the worst film I’m likely to see this year, it’s one of the worst films I have ever seen.

Shame on everyone involved.

Rating: 0 out of 5