Vindicta

Greetings again from the darkness. Sometimes low budget horror movies work, and sometimes they don't. As a general guideline, the less complicated they are, the better the chance of successful entertainment. Director Sean McNamara (THE KING'S DAUGHTER, 2022) is one of the more prolific directors you'll find. His work includes TV series, videos, short films, and feature films. He currently has 15 projects in the hopper. Sean is a busy man.

With a script by Ian Neligh and Steven Paul, this film offers moments of hope, but mostly it's too ambitious ... a rare criticism these days. Trying to tackle too many story lines creates a mess in the exact place a decent little genre film could have been born. Elena Kampouris (MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING 2 & 3) stars as Lou, a rookie paramedic just out of training. Fire Chief Rick (Sean Astin, THE LORD OF THE RINGS franchise) reluctantly assigns her to a first ride in the middle of riots, protests, and fires in a rough part of Seattle.

In addition to the mass chaos in the city, there is a masked killer on the loose - one who thrives on vicious and violent attacks. Suspicions arise when the same building burns that burned five years earlier, killing a mother and son. Fortunately, Lou is not a typical newbie. She possesses fighting skills and is fluent in Latin and Mandarin. Latin comes in quite handy since the killer scrawls his messages in Latin, leaving Lou to assist Detective Russo (Travis Nelson) with clues in the case.

In addition to her skills, Lou is also the idealistic daughter of retired cop played by Jeremy Piven ("Entourage"). The two are so close she even has a bobblehead of him on her car dash. Lou still blames her 9-year-old self for not saving her mother's life, no matter how many times people remind her she was just a kid. Perhaps you are starting to sense the issues with the film, and I have yet to mention the corruption and greed at the heart of the killer's mission of vengeance. One nice touch is the mask ... it's Michelangelo's David, and it's plenty creepy, even if most of the characters here don't come across as real people. Elena Kampouris is to be commended for giving her all to the role, but the writers and the film likely would have benefited from the KISS approach, Opening in select theaters and on digital beginning October 6, 2023.

Vindicta is a revenge serial killer film. It follows the tropes of this genre almost to the T. It is heavily cliched and trite, both in plotting and dialogue. Lead character is a spunky, tough woman who is a paramedic following in her fire fighter father. Oh, and she studied languages in college, specifically Latin and Chinese. This is important because the killer writes Latin phrases at each murder site. (Oh she also speaks Mandarin because she was raised in China town. No reason for this other than one other minor character speaks Mandarin for her to speak in an emergency situation.)

Stereotypical characters abound simply to fit plotting and structuring of the film. So many elements of this film are contrived that they blatantly shout their message out of the screen.

Not hugely mysterious, so the ending isn't much of a shock. It could almost be a good drinking game given how predictable this film is. Though I wouldn't want to watch it a second time.

I'm writing this with 30 minutes left. The main actor knows Latin and it's a good thing she does because what else would they do to look up what phrases mean? Oh yeah, they could google it.

This movie is neither scary or entertaining but I took the time to watch it and I appreciate you taking the time to read my review.

Jeremy Piven and Sean Aston are in this, and they probably didn't realize what they were signing up for. The script is kind of a mess, I guess there are fire riots going on and the police are nowhere to be found, leaving a paramedic to crack the case.

I was going to watch a Jennifer Lawrence movie on Netflix and ended up watching this instead and I profoundly regret it, guess I'll start cleaning while this move finishes.

This movie is laughably bad.

It seems like it was written by the school age child of a big Hollywood producer or something.

Because I'm not sure how anyone could read a script like this and think it was a good idea to make.

It's literally that awful.

Whoever it was has been watching way too many marvel movies "for inspiration".

Neither the writer, director, or any of the actors in this film should ever work again.

Everyone involved in this travesty should be immediately blacklisted, going forth.

The actors are all very recognizable faces...but they put on some of the most half-assed performances I've ever seen.

I genuinely can't tell if they suck that bad, or weren't even trying.

But it's real bad.

Either way, I can never look at them with any modicum of respect ever again.

The whole thing is so poorly constructed...it's not inherently clear what the hell is actually going on.

There's definitely a serial killer on the loose...amidst widescale riots aimed at a corrupt police force...and a polyglot paramedic, that still lives with her father, and has a fluent understanding of latin.

But what the point of it all is?

Who the hell cares.

If I wasn't trying to watch every horror film made in 2023, I honestly would have shut this off after the first 3 minutes.

It, quite literally, has no redeeming qualities whatsoever.

Actually...that's not entirely fair.

Because I genuinely couldn't stop laughing at how bad it is.

It's confounding to think that there's an employed idiot out there that actually greenlit this.

I'm not sure who that was...but whoever it is should be publicly flogged for their transgressions.

While the writer should be jailed indefinitely.

Because, you'd think it would take skill to suck this hard.

But they brought the suck here effortlessly.

1 out of 10.

My Google Latin didn't come out as expected, but at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter, id quod est.

Vindicta feels like a meld of a couple of other movies, without their budget, Demolidor: O Homem sem Medo (2003) and Elektra (2005) come to mind, as somebody else stated in these reviews. It does seem to be a bit of a mash, parts were good, others not. Writers Ian Neligh and Steven Paul were possibly not on the same page. That's just my opinion though.

Elena Kampouris was, I felt, miscast in this role, although she did have some credible parts in this movie.

David (Daniel Cudmore) wore this mask that only had two small holes for his eyes. His peripheral vision must have been crap and wouldn't have helped him on his killing spree.

Jeremy Piven was in this, and that's all I have to say about it, that's how impactful his presence was.

Anyway, overall, Vindicta had a chance to be good, but all it managed was average. I would recommend this, but with the above warnings.