The Apology

The Apology is a cheap movie and by that I don't mean just the budget. Sure it is a low budget movie but there are good low budget movies, unfortunately this isn't one of them. The story is very predictable, not well written in my opinion and the execution was just average. The acting wasn't that great either. Linus Roache, I can't say I'm a big fan of his performance, found it a bit bland and not convincing at all. As for Anna Gunn it was just average as well. Never been a big fan of her either. The Apology is the kind of movie I will forget everything about it by tomorrow and that's a good thing.

After twenty years of sobriety a grieving mother finally learns the truth about what happened to her daughter who's has been missing as long as her sobriety by a very unlikely person who shows up at her home to confess to her everything that happened to her daughter. With a very small budget and cast, this was a decent and very quick story of a missing person reveal. I was actually ready to turn it off because I thought it was going no where but after the reveal of the daughter's demise, my interest piqued and I decided to stay engaged and watch to the end. A dialog film more than a visual meaning that you could easily just listen and not watch the film and still manage to follow the story without missing anything. Not sure why it fell under the genre of horror and thriller because it's neither. It's a suspense dialog in one place with a cast of three people done proper. And let me just add one more thing, some family members are absolute trash and sometimes end up being your worst enemy.

Darlene Hagen (Anna Gunn) is still struggling 20 years after the disappearance of her daughter Sally. Jack Kingsley (Linus Roache) comes by claiming car trouble. In fact, he has a dark secret to reveal. Her friend Gretchen Sullivan (Janeane Garofalo) joins the horrific gathering.

New filmmaker Alison Locke is trying to write and direct a low budget feature. I don't know how, but she got three solid actors to do this. They make this as interesting as possible. The script isn't much. It has one surprise in the first half and the second half struggles. It has no more twists or turns to keep the interest. Mostly, this concept needs a few additions to keep it going all the way to the end.

I watched most of this film or at least tried to. It's an interesting premise I suppose, but it's also not in a lot of ways. The moment the guys (at the very beginning) car "breaks down" and she doesn't question it at all I knew the script wasn't going to be great.

It's basically a play format. A few characters and A LOT of dialogue. The acting is okay, but it just doesn't go anywhere and I personally didn't care about the outcome, the characters or really the whole story.

Overall, I can't give a full review because I got annoyed with all the yelling and arguing and fake tension I just turned it off to watch the Warriors game. We lost the game, but I won by ending the the struggle of watching this film.

This is a script which seems to have just gone ahead and filmed the second draft.

Anna Gunn; she's good. She's much more thank Skyler White. Jeneane Garafalo is always worthy of a watch - she's completely wasted here. Linus Roache does a great job playing both sleazy and urbane. That's pretty much been his whole career.

But the dialogue- ugh- way too much exposition and it was all delivered so awkwardly. The writer/director just didn't seem to believe the audience could fill in blanks using context or other means.

Perhaps that was something the producers insisted on?? But, audiences are not stupid (for the most part), and we can gather clues ourselves.

If you're looking for a good single-setting drama, there are far worse out there.