Sacrifié

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.

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+

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.

Chance Williams (Blair Underwood) loses his wife and child in an accident. At first, he appears to be grieving normally enough, staying with his friends Michael and Lauren (Michael Beach and Debbi Morgan) for a few days for support.

Chance soon begins to act a bit odd, taking on a completely different personality. His friends try to help but find themselves drawn into the vortex of Chance's disintegrating sanity.

ASUNDER is a drama for the most part, with each character revealing personal secrets that could ruin their lives. It's during the final act when the movie shifts into full horror-thriller mode.

Definitely worth watching. Especially the last 20 minutes...

This was one of the worst movies I've ever seen! I think it played down to the audience. When, at the beginning, Michael Beach's character makes the comment that Chance is crazy, it just went straight down hill from there. I love Blair Underwood----no question, but I think someone must have had something on him to get him to play this part. The ONLY saving grace in this movie was Debbie Morgan. We need to see more of her. She rises above the material, and she is one of my favorite actors, but even with a life preserver and the National Guard she couldn't rescue this fiasco. I rented this movie and I wanted my money back. I know lots of people put lots of effort into it, but they'd have done better studying the masters before trying to, off the top of their heads, do a Psychological Thriller. Stanley Donen, Peter Godfrey, Stanley Kubrik, Phillip Noyce, Renny Harlin, and of course Alfred Hitchcock would have been great places for the director to start his study. I looked at this movie twice to make sure I had the right impression. That's time I'll never get back.