Sinful

I have to say my expectations were dashed badly with this film upon seeing it. Now while I always get a sly sense of entertainment from any Misty Mundae film, I have to admit that I held higher hopes for this movie having read reviews in magazines and seeing that it won two indy awards from a NJ film festival.

I ran to the store and bought this film when it came out as it was touted as a more serious role for Mundae and while I find her films goofy and campy, I would love to see her break out into mainstream a little more. Well, while I hold hopes for this to happen someday, it won't happen with this particular director sadly.

The story had potential, but there are entire sequences that beg the question: Is this *all* in her head or is she flipping between reality and fantasy? A good director could have you wondering right to the end, and with the right vehicle and inferences could even make you ponder it afterwards, but with this film, it just leaves you confused (at least that was how I felt as well as a number of friends that watched it with me).

If you are into the trippy pseudo-reality genre, this might be the movie for you, for me, I just sat watching the end (won't ruin it for anyone) and scratching my head thinking: Did the end get clipped on the editing room floor? To me, this director seems to assume that everyone will just 'get it', and I can speak for the 6 people that watched it with me, we didn't get it. At all.

Personally as a fan of Misty Mundae I'll keep it in my collection (I actually like the cover more than the film), but it won't be one I'll watch very often I'm sad to say.

Sinful stars Erin Brown (Misty Mundae) as Lilith an emotionally disturbed young women who is desperately trying to have a baby. When she fails to conceive a child on her own, she starts to look at taking a child from another woman. Lilith sets her sights on her next door neighbor who she becomes obsessed and jealous of. This leads to a decision she makes with frightening results.Erin does an OK job playing the a deeply disturbed woman. The acting in the film with the exception of Mundae is average. The film attempts to portray a somewhat creepy atmosphere with some queasy special effects with mixed results. The dialogue is a little below average and the story line does not flow (a series of single scenes).The film shows the progression of films coming from the EI Cinema / Seduction Cinema brand. They started with underground fetish styles films, then very funny erotic parodies of mainstream film and now have started releasing low budget erotic psychological horror/thillers. This film is for fans of Erin Brown/Misty Mundae and those of low budget horror films.

Sinful (2006)

BOMB (out of 4)

Extremely awful psychological thriller about a married woman (Misty Mundae) who slowly loses her mind because she isn't able to have children. She eventually meets her neighbor who is pregnant and plans on taking the unborn baby from her. There have been a few recent stories with deranged woman ripping babies out of other women and I'm sure this subject, while vile, could make for a good thriller or character study but this film certainly isn't it. This is an incredibly bad movie from start to finish but I'm not sure who would walk into this movie and expect anything else. Mundae is best known for her sexploitation roles and that's where she should have stuck because her performance her is really, really bad. Not once did I believe her as this deranged woman and now that I've seen a handful of her films it seems directors like to show she's "crazy" or "bad" by having her smoke a cigarette. I personally don't understand this childish connection but if that's the only way an actress or screenplay can show badness then you know you're in trouble. The film goes from reality to a fantasy world and it's hard to separate the two as both sequences look the exact same (overly dark). The supporting players are equally bad and there's no sense of direction anywhere. We get some rather gory moments with a fetus being ripped out and other dumb things but gorehounds won't find anything good here. The nudity is here but does nothing. The film runs 65-minutes but it's obvious the filmmakers ran out of ideas just by the extended opening and closing credits, which probably take over ten minutes. Just wait until you see the closing credits because of how slowly they move to push up the running time. I've seen thousands of movies but this is the first time I've seen this practice to push a running time.

The movie contains lots of violent and disgusting imagery, nudity, but did not have a plot to hold the movie together as a story. Instead, the movie tries to visualize some of the twisted thought processes that might go through a woman's head as she steals another person's baby.

Nobody will enjoy this movie. It is not a story; i.e. a series of events. Whatever it was that the director was attempting to accomplish, he failed to put together a movie that was watchable or understandable.

If the cover is to believed, the movie did win two awards in New Jersey. Not your typical venue for movie awards, and I disagree that it should have received any awards, but I guess that means that some people might have understood what the director wanted to say.

Sinful is a strange film about a girl who wants a baby and can't conceive one. She blames her husband and goes to the doctor regularly to check for pregnancy. She meets her neighbor and covets their life and baby. Her mother is a real b—h and she gets no support from anyone because of her violent accusatory nature. She dreams about having a baby, and also about taking someone else's baby. There us a lot of violence in this film along with some nudity and bad language. Some disturbing scenes with what the film makers want you to believe are fetuses at various stages of growth. The film seems to be made up of disconnected scenes, but it seems to tell a story of a very troubled woman. I can't say whether the acting was good or bad because the entire film wasn't very believable.