Missionary

Since he made his writing and directing debut with "Dread", a nasty little adaptation of a Clive Barker piece, five years ago, Anthony DiBlasi has dipped his toes into a number of horror bloodbaths in varying genres.

"Missionary" seems almost like a response to a dare from a drinking buddy: "Make a low-budget homage to Fatal Attraction and make the stalker a fanatical Mormon elder." And I'll be damned if the guy hasn't pulled it off.

I do kind of question the taste of using ANY religion so prominently in such a movie. If you can get by that detail (and maybe DiBlasi chose Mormonism precisely because it would be so uncharacteristic to expect anything like this from an LDS elder), the film is relentless in building a pretty unbearable level of suspense over it's short run time.

Credit not only DiBlasi's (as usual) driving pacing and crack storytelling but his cast as well --- they supply the glue that keeps your interest in this shop-worn plot. Dawn Olivieri anchors the film firmly as no-nonsense mom Katherine, who finds herself sucked into an affair with Elder Kevin Brock (an earnestly frightening Mitch Ryan), during a trial separation from husband Ian (Kip Pardue). None of the actors have any false-sounding dialog and the exchanges between Katherine and her son Kelsey (an impressive Connor Christie) ring especially sincere.

"Missionary" is really pretty astonishing if you think about it. It's proof that you don't really need an original idea to make an absorbing film --- as long as you have a talented cast and writer/director at the helm to both keep you engaged and caring about the action on the screen.

This is the typical B grade stalker movie. There is nothing is new here, it's very predictable, and the acting is mediocre at best. This was recommended to me by a friend, and I watched it on Netflix. I should have looked at the viewer rating first, because if I'd seen it I wouldn't have bothered to watch. I won't make that mistake again any time soon! I suppose I'm not the right audience for this movie. I do like psychological thrillers, but stories about psychos who just go all psychotic with no rhyme or reason just bore me. I'm not a prude about sex or violence, but here are parts of this that just seem to be gratuitous: over-the-top violence just thrown in for effect. When I think about it, I can't imagine a single friend to whom I'd recommend this (except perhaps the one who recommended it to me). As they say, now THERE'S two hours of my life that I won't get back...

"Missionary" revolves around conflicts that appear beneath seemingly friendly and interesting relationships, only that nothing is what is seems on surface.

I'm usually willing to give latitude to smaller productions that feature a B-level cast, and that was the attitude I had when I saw the movie. The results were mixed.

There is some decent acting on this movie, and when they have good text they can put some above average character performance. The major problem of this film is that writing is very inconsistent. The story oscillates between some good and believable scenes, with others that let you down by their incoherence, lack of continuity or just plain 'straight from cliché handbook'. A couple passages are extremely lame, almost giving the impression two separate writes at odds with each other developed the story.

At the end of the movie, when closing credits come, there is this feeling that the director wasted an overachieving cast (relatively to their league) with bad text.

The characters all behave so realistically that I was sucked in and on the edge of my seat. A lot of times things happen in this kind of movie that cause it to lose that realism. That did not happen here.

The story of a good mother that is going through a tough time and makes an understandably bad decision because of it. She never lost credibility to me. The kid in the movie is not some super child or genius or crazy person. He behaves like a real kid his age and the villain of the piece was frightening and crazy but not unrealistically tough or invincible. It made this movie uniquely scary.

I was in the mood for a thriller. I got it.

Katherine is a struggling mother trying to create a better life for her and her son. She meets Elder Brock, a handsome Mormon missionary with a troubled past and they begin an incendiary love affair.

Some might look at this and say it is disrespectful to the Mormon religion and its followers. Those people would be wrong. This is not in any way saying that Mormons are evil, but that a twisted person will use their faith in twisted ways. For me, this was very much in the same spirit as "The Stepfather" with Terry O'Quinn. Stepfathers are not bad, but they can be!

The tone was just right, the tension was good. There was some dichotomy between what makes a family for one person versus another. This certainly deserves another watch and I would recommend it to others.