Confessional

Yet another movie premise squandered away on a silly plot, bad acting and a twist you can see coming from a mile away. This one rehashed dull threads of movies past with a cast of fresh "pretty people" all somehow connected to the deaths of two people on campus. Complete with God awful camera angles that don't match the scene, with each actor turning to face each camera as they switch between shots. Nothing more than a lazy revenge mystery that doesn't even qualify as "mystery" as it is blatantly obvious within the first 20 minutes who is behind it all. Hard pass.

I'll be a departure from a good number of reviewers and spare the synopsis. It's at the top of the page, for Christ's sake.

The direction was fairly minimal but I thought effective. An entire film shot in booths has its limits. With a couple of exceptions, I also didn't think the performances were that bad, especially given what little they had to play off of. Again, the limits that have to be dealt with given the approach.

I liked the premise, but it needs to come together at the end to be satisfying, and I don't think it really got there. I'm not saying you have to LIKE the resolution, but you do have to at least recognize it as the culmination of every bread crumb that's been laid before you, and there was too much that fell short.

The movie is obviously all dialogue, but surprisingly little of that dialogue actually contributed to the story. I recognize that maybe it was revelatory to some degree as to the mechanics of each character, but even as you watch it you know it's not really fleshing out the mystery in any substantive way. It's just padding. So, you're basically listening to a handful of archetypes blather on like any typical student does (to the ear of an actual adult). I'm guessing this may have first been done as a 30-minute student film with 3-4 fewer characters.

There has been mention of the anti-male talking points. Those were minimal, but once the first one hit, it took up a chair in the back of my mind and never really went away, right up through the false credits which included the final shot at men. It made it extra delicious that this shot not only was a shade off of the proper use of the term "derivative" to describe male producers, but it was misspelled as well. :)

If this were a typical indie horror pic of this quality, I'd recommend it as ambient noise while you're busying yourself with other things. But this one requires that you sit and actively listen to it, so it is held to a higher level before it can get a nod.

It's not garbage. If you're really interested in this approach to storytelling, give it a try. Maybe you'll get more out of it than I did. But I'm guessing you'll likely click out of it a little disappointed.

Take care.

This really could have been 30 mins tops. Long, drawn out, lacking climax or anything really interesting. The film, moving at a snails pace, feels like more of a chore to sit thru than anything else and the ending leaves the viewer wondering why they stuck it out the entire time. I hate to leave such a negative review about someone's efforts, but it just missed every mark.

First rule of film school is don't make your movie about students at a film school. I gave it a 3 generous stars for the cool concept, sound, and set design, but the story is... well, another story. Really annoying characters who get too dramatic too fast. Everything felt contrived. The title cards in between scenes were unnecessary and read like they were written by child. Second rule of film school is show don't tell. If the filmmakers are reading this, please don't be discouraged. You had a cool concept, and I hope you can learn from this and apply it to your next movie.

Since signing up to Shudder two months ago,I've been wanting to catch a original/exclusive on the first day,but due to various offline things have ended up watching at weekends. Unexpectedly getting extra free time,I went for a confession.

View on the film:

Seating all the subjects in neon lit booths, director Brad T. Gottfred & cinematographer Tobias Deml record a dry monotone atmosphere, keeping to the same mid-shot, giving each booth a repetitive appearance, draining any chance of tension arising.

Attempting to move the Found Footage genre from Horror to Drama, the screenplay by Jennifer Wolfe attempts to record shocking twists in the booths, which fizzle out quickly, due to Wolfe making each person in the booths utterly interchangeable,and the lack of background given to either the people in the booths,or the two dead teens,causing the confessions made to ring hollow.