Confessional

Not sure why this was a Shudder Exclusive because there is no horror in the film whatsoever. It's not a thriller. It's a pile of garbage. I've watched almost every horror film that the above average horror fan can watch in my 30 years, and this is not only the worst horror film I've seen, it's the worst film.

I've been reading reviews on films for about 8 years now on IMDB to see what people say before I watch it. Wish I had done that for this one. Heed the reviews or you too will lose 86 boring minutes of your life.

First, let me state I have never given 2 stars to any review, but this barely qualifies for the generous extra star I provided. This movie was simply painful to sit through. I'm not certain why it is categorized as a horror movie. I felt like I spent a couple hours watching paint dry on a wall. This movie had great potential. Actually, it didn't. It failed on every level. I won't comment on the acting as I'm not certain anyone could pull off making this movie interesting. As an actors "Actor" I don't blame the cast as they did the best they could with a horrible script that simply went nowhere. Shudder should have never put this movie in their line-up as it diminished the quality of their network.

Yet another movie premise squandered away on a silly plot, bad acting and a twist you can see coming from a mile away. This one rehashed dull threads of movies past with a cast of fresh "pretty people" all somehow connected to the deaths of two people on campus. Complete with God awful camera angles that don't match the scene, with each actor turning to face each camera as they switch between shots. Nothing more than a lazy revenge mystery that doesn't even qualify as "mystery" as it is blatantly obvious within the first 20 minutes who is behind it all. Hard pass.

I finished watching this film about 10 minutes ago on Shudder and if I'm honest it was quite disappointing. The basic plot is that after the deaths of two people, seven students are blackmailed in to a booth to confess something. It sounds pretty straight forward, but as the background for each character or the situation isn't properly explained it just ends up super confusing. Each of the seven then immediately embarks upon a rambling diatribe, most of which are hard to follow. Several of them go from 0-100 in one step, which doesn't leave them anywhere to go performance wise for the rest of the film.

If they had reduced the number of confessors down to maybe 4 or 5 and used the time saved to add some extra context, I think this could have been a reasonable film.

I'll be a departure from a good number of reviewers and spare the synopsis. It's at the top of the page, for Christ's sake.

The direction was fairly minimal but I thought effective. An entire film shot in booths has its limits. With a couple of exceptions, I also didn't think the performances were that bad, especially given what little they had to play off of. Again, the limits that have to be dealt with given the approach.

I liked the premise, but it needs to come together at the end to be satisfying, and I don't think it really got there. I'm not saying you have to LIKE the resolution, but you do have to at least recognize it as the culmination of every bread crumb that's been laid before you, and there was too much that fell short.

The movie is obviously all dialogue, but surprisingly little of that dialogue actually contributed to the story. I recognize that maybe it was revelatory to some degree as to the mechanics of each character, but even as you watch it you know it's not really fleshing out the mystery in any substantive way. It's just padding. So, you're basically listening to a handful of archetypes blather on like any typical student does (to the ear of an actual adult). I'm guessing this may have first been done as a 30-minute student film with 3-4 fewer characters.

There has been mention of the anti-male talking points. Those were minimal, but once the first one hit, it took up a chair in the back of my mind and never really went away, right up through the false credits which included the final shot at men. It made it extra delicious that this shot not only was a shade off of the proper use of the term "derivative" to describe male producers, but it was misspelled as well. :)

If this were a typical indie horror pic of this quality, I'd recommend it as ambient noise while you're busying yourself with other things. But this one requires that you sit and actively listen to it, so it is held to a higher level before it can get a nod.

It's not garbage. If you're really interested in this approach to storytelling, give it a try. Maybe you'll get more out of it than I did. But I'm guessing you'll likely click out of it a little disappointed.

Take care.