Goddess of Love

Holy crap, what an awesomely entertaining film. I purposely knew nothing about it, other than the written synopsis, and the film ended up being of the most well-made American films I have seen in a long time. The premise starts off simple enough; a very pretty girl meets a man at a strip club and a relationship blooms. Unfortunately, things start to go south very quickly. The level of crazy in this is commendable, and I found myself chuckling at how disturbingly psychotic the female lead became, and by the time the credits start to roll, you are left with a sense of satisfaction that no loose ends were left, which in itself is a success. Coupled with a talented cast, great use of practical special effects, and some amazingly beautiful cinematography (seriously, there were times when I paused the film and thought to myself, "That would make a beautiful painting"), this film is an achievement in cinematic excellence, as far as I am concerned. The people responsible for this should be commended for not only showing the world what films can become at the hands of competent people, but also what a love for the craft embeds into the final product. A treat from start to finish, the writer/director has a new fan and I look forward to what this creative team does next.

In GODDESS OF LOVE, exotic dancer, Venus (Alexis Kendra) falls for a man (Woody Naismith) in the club where she performs, leading to a whirlwind romance. Unfortunately for Venus, the relationship doesn't quite go as she had hoped, causing her to become increasingly jealous, desperate, and suspicious.

Director Jon Knautz does a great job of slowly building the mania, and dialing up the psychotic tension. Ms. Kendra plays her unbalanced role as a somewhat sympathetic character, that is, until it all hits the fan. Venus is a driven force of nature who simply cannot handle disappointment.

The result is a superior horror-thriller fueled by vengeance. It also has a wonderful twist at the end...

So, a stripper meets a guy at her job after following the advice from another stripper about picking out men to fleece. The things is, she is a novice and she falls for the guy instead of following her fellow stripper's advice. And we travel into the descent of madness for some strange reason because it doesn't make any logical sense to do so because films seems to speed up a relationship when all logic fails. Why do they do this all the time, a guy meets a girl a girl meets a guy and 3 minutes later they fall in love. Not real and this isn't real. I read another reviewers comments and it seems as if that person may have had a connection with the film because what they wrote had nothing to do with the film and what I experienced. In fact, based on those comments, I watched the film and as I watched it, I was very close to abandoning it because it was treading down well worn paths. I was hoping for better but in the end, it was no surprise with the ending as the attempt to misdirect throughout the film was an absolute failure as was the premise.

I didn't really know much about "Goddess of Love" prior to sitting down to watch it, after I had happened to come across it by sheer blind luck. I read the synopsis, and thought it sounded like it had potential to be a great movie, perhaps sort of a mixture of a revenge movie and thrown in with some of the psychotic madness as seen in movies such as "May".

After having seen "Goddess of Love", I will say that writers Alexis Kendra and Jon Knautz certainly had some interesting ideas and Jon Knautz also managed to bring many of these elegantly to life on the screen. However, the movie just lacked a more intense pace. The storyline was good, but it just suffered under a very slow paced progress.

And speaking of the storyline, then there were some really interesting aspects to the storyline in terms of Venus's slow decent as her mind and psyche slowly starts to crumble and come apart. But there is more, there were also some really nice twists to the storyline along the way; twists that you don't really see coming. And on that account, the writers really did a phenomenal job.

"Goddess of Love" has some very good acting performances, and the movie is really carried a great long way by the talented cast they had hired for the various roles in this movie. Most impressive was Alexis Kendra in the lead role as Venus. She really carried the movie well, and she put on a very memorable performance.

This movie really had potential to be a very unique and outstanding movie, but it was just brutally butchered by a way too slow paced storytelling. It was a shame, truly, because I did enjoy the storyline and the acting, but it was the lack of proper pace to the storyline that just killed it off for me. As such, the movie settles on a mediocre 5 out of 10 stars rating from me.

Surprisingly entertaining given the announced topic. It could have fell all over with boring notes and moody development (trying not to give up anything, here - no spoilers). But no: we delve into this woman's psyche and it's fun, it's a wild trip.

The ending is a bit easy and therefore, disappointing. But only the very end.

In terms of cinematography, it's pretty well made. Photography is good, so is the editing. But it falls a bit short. It's a tiny bit... raw, a little thin. It shows its small budget through the manner it's done, imo.

Actors are good. It's a sexy flick you tend to follow with interest all the way through the end. Personally, I liked it. It was a good 90-something minutes. Really enjoyable. I rate it 5 a bit unfairly. I think it's probably worth something closer to a 6, but it does fall short of it. (6: entertaining; 5: entertaining with reservations).