Asunder

After a professional photographer, Chance, sees his wife die in a freak ferris wheel accident, he becomes a tad morbid and overly defensive. So holding his former best friend wrongly responsible, he puts a bizarre plan of revenge into motion. Coming off as a black and reversed version of "Fatal Attraction", I really wanted to like this film and the plot summery that Comcast gave in on Starz on Demand sounded intriguing so I gave it a chance, however I'm sad to say that the film starts off with some promise, but degenerates into mediocrity as the film wears on. None of the major characters came off to me as being particularly believable, and Blair Underwood has done so MUCH better in the past and sadly he can't save this by-the-books psychological drama.

My Grade: D+

Well, the movie looks good, too good. What was on screen was just a modern upper-middle class black experience, packaged as a psycho-thriller and it all seems like playacting. Almost every character and setting, for that matter, looks so handsome and beautiful that it was shot as not to portray anyone or anything with a minimum of real life flaws or imposing reality. The Director tries way too hard to portray Blacks as successful "American Dream" types that it seems that they lose their soul along with this movie on their way to the top.

It is so glossy and has that TV patina of plastic, passing as a suspenseful neo-noir movie and it is simply all packaged so slick that it feels like a trip to a shopping mall. These people are so beautiful and so successful and so bland (even the villain) that everyone seems to move and talk in slow motion and deliver some really uninspired, vapid dialog along with unrealistic stalking and predatory behavior.

The movie has such a gloss to it one cannot ever get pass the shine and believe anything that is going on here. These people seem to wear their success as a designer distraction and underneath bares a barely beating heart. It is all so pretty and pretty awful.

I had been waiting to see this movie for two years because made it to some theaters and university auditoriums (with Tim Reid hosting). I rushed to Blockbuster to rent it because I saw it was coming out on Feb 11th. It was worth the wait! Blair Underwood, Michael Beach, and Debbi Morgan were outstanding! It was kind of like a black "Fatal Attraction!" It was so nice to see a black film portraying "well-to-do couples" and yet they were still keeping it real. Tim Reid's direction was superb in how he showed that something so innocent as four couples (who are all best friends)going to the fair can turn into a fatal and horrifying experience and create a "deadly domino" effect that can threaten and ruin relationships as well as lives. I thought the storyline was great. I also liked how Blair Underwood's character (Chance) evolved from docile to demented and how Michael Beach(Michael) explained that Chance once had a "dark-side" and once he met and married Roberta, it calmed him down. All the main characters had their crosses they had to bear. I also loved the town-setting, scenery, music and cinematography. Kudos to Tim Reid, Blair Underwood, and Daphne Maxwell-Reid for taking author Eric Lee Bowers and putting it on screen.

A formula movie, this is nonetheless an edge-of-your-seat thriller. Blair Underwood's transformation from a dark yet likeable character to a horrifyingly creepy antagonist makes this film a real nail-biter. A twist on the Fatal Attraction theme, Asunder is much more satisfying with its moral dilemmas not quite solved at the end.

Yikes!! 'Asunder' packs a serious punch --- I found myself clutching my chest, in great fear for the characters pursued by Chance (Blair Underwood, who proved long ago, in 'Just Cause', how scary he can be!), for the bulk of the film. Adrian Lyne's 'Fatal Attraction' no longer holds the trophy for this scorned-lover-comes-back-for-revenge-genre. See it --- you won't be disappointed.