iMurders

I only gave this movie a 4 because it had Tony Todd in it. This story was beyond predictable to anyone that is a fan of this genre. William Forsythe took a role that was beneath him and his poor acting showed it, otherwise the established actors in this movie did a great job. That can't be said for the rest of the cast. It was a poorly done story that did not give finality to some some people and no decent background to others. The relationships in the movie were unrealistic for the most part. They chose to do a close-up shot on an actress with yellow teeth, which grossed me out. Whoever made this movie, kudos for getting the established actors, shame on you for casting William Forsythe in a role he is not suited for and go back to school to learn about making a good movie and telling a story well.

I was intrigued to watch this film due to some of the cast members and though the synopsis sounded average and the title has the too often used construction these days (the "i") I went into watching this with a positive view. However I quickly saw dull stereotype characters with mediocre dialogue acted by people that should know how to do better. It became blatantly obvious from the first 5 minutes who the "bad person" was going to be (amongst other tired virtues) as it was a completely superfluous character with too much screen time along with the poor attempt at "misdirection dialogue" from the other characters. Poorattempt at the genre which made it very disappointing to sit through.

Detail is what seems to be missing from this type of film. If it has the detail then it's so good, but if it doesn't have detail as is the case of this film, I spend my time looking for faults that the writers missed.

When the cop is asked what kind of car was driven and he says I don't remember. My first thought was, "Now what cop misses big details like that?".

Film is just bad. I've seen William Forsythe do a much better job of acting, but given he was following a directors direction with a crap script his lack of performance is understandable.

For the most part Terri Colombino is one of the players that given what she had to work with did a pretty good job. I guess that the biggest disappointment was that the fake land lady never did do a nude scene in the film. I looked like she had the rack to set a world record!

Maybe the worst part of this movie is it isn't so bad as to be unintentionally funny, but it's close.(Charles Durning's psychiatric sessions bring bad acting to a new level). The only suspense in the plot is how some pretty good actors managed to get into this embarrassment of a film. Let's start with William Forsythe, the college professor, who we are suppose to believe much younger attractive women are drawn too. Only in a fat middle aged man's fantasy world could that be true. And this movie. Nothing in this movie is very believable. I feel bad about pointing out just one persons bad acting when there are so many, but Brooke Lewis' performance as the FBI agent is the most frightening thing in the this 'horror' movie. It looks worse next to Tony Todd's performance as her partner who is actually quite good making her look all the worse. The bad plot(you'll know who did it in the first 15 minutes) and acting gets overshadowed by a terrible script. Maybe its a situation where a director falls in love with his own words. Worse dialog you have never heard. Maybe no actor could do a good performance given what they had to work with. So if you are stuck seeing it see it for laughs and maybe you won't feel so bad about wasting two hours of your life.

You know what? This is pretty incompetent in a few ways, but the incompetence works for it.

This is a murder mystery of the old school. You are introduced to characters. Murders are being committed. Clues are placed around. Many suspects and many motives are given.

There is a chatroom angle, but that does not matter. There is a horror genre angle, but that does not matter either.

What matters is that you really are allowed to be the detective. There are none of the detective genre devices that you expect to find. The situation is very chaotic, more nonsensical than the conventions allow. That's what makes it work. Yes, you are a bit surprised at the end. But they play fair, and in the denouement, you have the film flashbacks to attest that the solution was under your nose.

The production values are pretty bad. And the lines are profoundly juvenile. But the mystery itself: cool stuff.

Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.