Flops

Movie: The Basement

My Rating: 2 stars

Here is another indie film that I streamed through Prescreen.  But, this was the first one that I was actually pretty disappointed with.  Well, the other films had their own, little flaws, but the acting in this one was pretty cheesy right from the get go.  The script had the characters talking to themselves in a very unnatural way, as a way of telling the audience what was happening in the story.  It’s pretty ludicrous.  You can get away with that sort of thing if you’re creating a stylized, genre film, but not with one that you’re trying to play straight.  I’m glad I didn’t see this one at a film festival.  I probably would have laughed aloud and offended the director.  In addition to the rather cheesy acting, director, Robert C. Franke, uses a lot of pretty ham-handed imagery.  This usually took the form of news footage from the various conflicts in the Middle East.  I’m guessing this was an attempt to make the film’s message more poignant and relevant, but it all seemed pretty amateurish. 

The story is about a face-off between a terrorist and a cop.  But, they both happen to be trapped in the same industrial basement together, with no apparent way to get out.  Will they perish together out of spite or a sense of duty?  Or, will they get to know one another and learn to sympathize with one another’s cause, allowing them to work together to escape a certain death?  Even the premise feel a little used up.  Although, you never know with these things.  Sometimes they’ll surprise you.

Now, I don’t want to be a total jerk about this film.  I know these filmmakers work really hard on their projects.  And, this one actually has a lot of good things going for it.  The production value of this film is actually pretty good for an indie project.  It probably helps that the film is almost entirely shot in one, very Spartan, location—an underground sub-basement.  And, that the film is presented in entirely sepia tones.  A limited color palette does wonders for a film’s aesthetics, I hear.  It’s just that my chief gripe is with the elements that are impossible to change after the fact.  The acting and the script is a really big part of a film.  They’re pretty hard to salvage.  You’d have to shoot the whole thing over again if you wanted to change either of those things.