Unnatural & Accidental

I recently saw this at the 2007 Palm Springs International Film Festival. It's a dramatized film version of Marie Clements' stage play The Unnatural and Accidental Woman. The term comes from the official cause of death being unnatural and accidental referring to the deaths of 10 native Canadian women on Vancouver's east side in the 1980's from acute alcohol poisoning. The women were known heavy drinkers of skid row and it was assumed they had died from self-induced over indulgence until it was learned that a common acquaintance of them had been seen with them before their deaths. In the actual story, career criminal Gilbert Paul Jordan was a former barber who was an alcoholic and craved alcoholic sex with hookers. He would get them drunk until they passed out and have sex with them and continue to pour alcohol down their throats. Jordan is depicted here as a mechanic. In this dramatization of the core of that story the film has the daughter of one of the victims going into the skid row district to search for her long missing mother and with the help of the spirits of the victims she is driven to find her mother or the killer. This is a fictionalized account of the story and may seem far-fetched but truth can be stranger than fiction which led Clements to write the play. Carl Bessai directs with good performances from Carmen Moore, Callum Keith Rennie and Tantoo Cardinal. This is a good film and may be worth checking out. I would give this a 7.0 out of 10.

The acting was very good, the storyline was interesting, but the overbearing musical score which just never stopped completely ruined the film for me. It was like hearing constant water dropping from a kitchen sink that was leaking, or someone banging on a pipe constantly throughout the film you were trying to watch. I guess the director Carl Bessai may have been attempting to remind his audience that the haunting musical score was to remind the serial killer and the daughter of one of the victims who is trying to find her missing mother, that the dead women live on and will forever haunt the serial killer and unfortunately the audience as well.

The storyline is loosely based on 10 aboriginal women who were alcoholics and met with an untimely death deemed by the county coroner as "Unnatural & Accidental" thus the movie title. Actor Callum Keith Rennie plays Norman, an alcoholic mechanic who likes to have sex with drunk native Indian women and then after they are out cold from drinking or knocked unconscious by Norman's punching and strangling them he continues to pour booze down their throat to make their deaths appear to be from alcohol poisoning.

I enjoy a good serial killer film and as for the characters in this film the acting was above par as was the storyline. Unfortunately the director Carl Bessai should have paid attention to his early film preview critics who unless they were completely deaf would have advised him that he needed to tone down the musical score because it completely takes over any redeeming qualities of the film and irritates his audience to no end thus distracting from an otherwise enjoyable dramatic performance by the two lead actors Callum Keith Rennie who plays serial killer Norman, and Carmen Moore who plays Rebecca who is searching for her missing mother, a native Indian.

If you can somehow ignore the most irritating (supposedly haunting) musical score which is constantly in the background audio throughout the entire film then maybe, just maybe, you will like the film. As for me I just could not help it but I just kept getting more and more irritated waiting for the musical score to either just subside or preferably stop even for just a short while but to no avail, it kept ringing throughout the film. I give the film 2 stars for some very good acting and a low overall rating of 3 out of 10 due to the badly done music score that was way overbearing.