For the first article/review, whatever you want to call it, of Synester Light's Monster Masquerade, I chose the first movie whose plot I guessed completely and utterly wrong. That movie is Resolution. Usually, if the movie's back text or the online description is vague, like this movie's online description was, I can guess what the movie will be about.
Not this time. Especially not by the poster.
Despite this movie being in the horror section of Netflix, I think that it's much more of a thriller/mystery. There were 2 jump scares in it, but that's about it as far as scary goes. Netflix's description says "Chris spends his days smoking crack at his remote forest cabin until his friend Michael arrives, planning to hold him hostage until he's clean."
Now, from that description, I thought that this movie was going to be a giant gorefest, like Saw or Wrong Turn. I thought that Michael would take Chris captive and brutally torture the addiction out of him. What this movie was actually about is a lot tamer, and a whole lot more confusing.
Here's a brief summary of the movie:
SPOILERS AHEAD
For some reason, this movie only has 1 female character, and we only see her for 10 seconds in the beginning and then she's never seen or heard from again. Odd. Anyway, Michael goes up to his friend Chris' cabin in the woods, where he finds Chris doped out of his mind again, shooting his various guns at whatever he feels like. Chris is a crack addict, and he doesn't hide it at all. He openly smokes crack in front of Michael and Michael tells a story in the beginning about how Chris showed up to Michael and his wife's wedding high and ruined the whole thing. Chris is friendly towards Michael, as they are best friends, but when Michael politely asks Chris to stop smoking crack, Chris refuses. Then, Michael hits Chris and knocks him to the floor before proceeding to handcuff Chris to a pipe on the wall. Michael's plan is to stay with Chris for a week and care for him while he goes through withdrawal and eventually gets clean. Chris is obviously not thrilled with this plan.
Next time, on Redneck Rehab...
Michael gives Chris some water and a laptop to entertain himself. Later on, two thugs show up at the house, demanding drugs that Chris apparently owes them. Michael talks his way out of a violent situation and the thugs agree to come back later. Over the next two days, Michael explores a bit around the woods by the house and he keeps coming across various CDs, records, and film, which all contains footage or audio of people dying. Micheal starts feeling a little uneasy about these recordings, as well as Chris' withdrawal, which keeps getting worse with each day. Micheal then finds out that Chris' home isn't actually his home at all. The house belongs to a Native American named Charles, who is angry about Chris' squatting at first, but then agrees to let him and Michael stay there for the week, but only if Michael pays him an absurd amount of money. Michael begins to feel more frightened about the recordings, and he thinks that someone is intentionally leaving them around for him and Chris to find. So, Chris tells Michael about a man who lives nearby who knows a lot about the area's history and Michael goes and meets up with the man. He tells Michael that the woods have a bad history of religious fanatics and cultists, who come there frequently to perform rituals. He says that they believe that the woods are watched over by some invisible entity. Michael then goes back to the house to find Chris with a bloody hand, a result of him slamming his coffee mug on the ground and it shattering in his hand. Strangely enough, that is one of the very few instances of blood in this movie. I was quite surprised at how little gore this movie had.
Okay, this has been pretty straightforward up to this point, right? Well, here's where the director/writer decides to say "Nope, make it as weird and confusing as possible".
Anyway, Micheal bandages Chris' hand and then a projector that Chris has in his house turns on by itself and projects images of Chris' dead body on a morgue table and Michael's dead body in a casket in a funeral home. Naturally, this freaks the two men out and they start arguing about what's happening. As they're arguing, the laptop turns on by itself and shows video of the two of them, and the video shows what they're doing, but 5 seconds before they actually do it. Michael and Chris are now staring in shock at the laptop, which switches to another video of them in the house, but later in the evening. Then the video shows the two thugs from before bursting into the house and savagely beating Micheal and Chris to death with baseball bats. This is when Michael and Chris decide that running away is the best possible decision, so Michael releases Chris from the handcuffs and they run outside and hide inside of a broken down truck that's nearby the house. And guess what they find there?
Delicious, fresh baked cookies!
Nah, just kidding, it's actually another CD. Although, the cookies would've made about as much sense as what's on the CD. Michael puts the CD in the truck's player, which somehow still works, despite the truck not having a battery, and it plays audio of Michael and Chris pleading with someone to spare them. The man they're pleading to is Charles, who says that they were late on their rent payment, so he shoots them both and has another man with him burn their bodies. At this point, Michael and Chris both decide that it's best if they just hide out in a bush by the house until it's morning, because both incidents seem to happen that night. Later that night, Michael and Chris have a heart to heart talk about their lives and their friendship as they watch the two thugs pace around in the house, waiting for them to come back. Eventually, Charles and his friend show up and relentlessly shoot the thugs in the head with a shotgun before lighting both their bodies and the house on fire.
Ohhhh! NOW that poster makes sense!
Charles and his friend walk off and a few minutes later, Chris starts to panic and rushes toward the house in an attempt to get the bag of crack that he hid inside. Michael stops Chris and they both stand in front of the house as the camera shifts to a cloudy first person view that rises up out of the fire as Michael and Chris' eyes widen in terror. Chris drops to his knees and bows and Michael asks whatever being just came out of the fire to please have mercy. The camera then rushes towards Michael and Chris and cuts to black.
So, that's Resolution. All in all, this was a decent thriller. It was a tad boring in the beginning, but it did keep me in suspense, wondering what was going to happen with all of the scattered recordings, even if that ending payoff was pretty stupid. Both main actors were really good as well. Peter Cilella played a perfect straight man to Vinny Curran's great portrayal of a crazy crackhead. There was a bit of humor thrown into the dialogue at various points, too, which I love in a horror movie. Even though it was slow starting with a lame ending, Resolution was still a solid film and I give it 7 crazy crack addicts out of 10.
Until next time, everybody!
