Maybe Amelia Pembrook and Will Trent could meet at a conference. It could happen,
if their fictional worlds ever intersect, since she works for the Mississippi
Bureau of Investigation, while Trent serves its Georgia counterpart. The state
bureaus might be enjoying some pop culture attention, but nobody will enjoy the
case that brings her to Canton, a small Mississippi town that “will surprise
visitors in all the worst ways.” It also happens to be her first field assignment
in director-screenwriter Brando Benetton’s The Girl in the River, which
releases tomorrow in theaters and on VOD.
Pembrook
is considered a brilliant instructor at the MBI academy, but the Bureau
director, Erica Graysmith, must push, shove, and even threaten to fire her
before she finally agrees to investigate in the field. Her partner is certainly
experienced—possibly too experienced. Alan Kramer inadvertently attained John “Mindhunter”
Douglas-like prominence, but the tragic death of his young son left him a shell
of his former self.
Kramer
wants to retire, but Graysmith needs him to solve the case of the abducted Otto
twins, Anna and Greta. The body of one was recovered from the river, but the
other is still of assumed a captive of their kidnapper. The crime itself has
outraged the community, but their wealthy grandfather Arthur’s political connections
put added pressure on Graysmith.
Shot on
location in Canton, Jackson, and Vicksburg, Girl in the River soaks up the
local vibe quite nicely. It is rather refreshing to see a film largely set
outside the major urban areas that isn’t yet another smalltown Hallmark romance.
Unfortunately, the mystery is disappointingly simplistic. Anyone who hasn’t
cracked the case halfway through might be tempted to buy the bridge the body
was dumped off.
It is
shame, because Benetton pulled off some interesting casting. Tiffany Hadish is surprisingly
successful playing it almost entirely straight as Graysmith, the canny cop and
administrator. It is weirdly nostalgic to see Andrew Stevens, the star of
several 1970s miniseries and the 1990s Night Eyes franchise, appearing
as distraught old man Otto (and also producing). As a bonus, Devon Sawa convincingly
broods as haggard Kramer.
They were quite a thing in their time, but they could not survive the
double-whammy of the collapsing video store market and the rise of puritanical
woke-ism. Somehow, low-budget horror has weathered the perfect storm, but sexy
thrillers with words like “deadly,” indecent,” “eyes,” “body,” and “night” in
their titles just could not maintain market share. The filmmakers and stars who
worked prolifically in the genre look back on their work in
director-producer-editor Anthony Penta’s documentary We Kill for Love,
which releases tomorrow on VOD.
The
genesis of it all was Brian de Palma’s Dressed to Kill, which established
just about all of the genre’s tropes and motifs. Lawrence Kasdan’s Body Heat
was its Citizen Kane and Basic Instinct and Fatal
Attraction were its Star Wars-sized hits. In between, there were a
lot of cheaper films, promising, but not necessarily delivering naughty thrills,
for customers of independent video stores and late-night cable TV.
The
phenomenon was well underway during the mid-to-late-1980s, but it maybe reached
its peak in the early 1990s. Andrew Stevens is a major reason why. He leveraged
his notoriety as an actor (from films like The Fury and Death Hunt)
to get his screenplay produced. He also starred in Night Eyes, which is
definitely one of the documentary’s touchstone films. To Stevens’ credit, he is
a good interview subject, who can discuss his career with self-aware
perspective and a sense of humor.
Occasionally,
there is some horror crossover in We Kill for Love, mainly thanks to
Fred Olen Rey. Penta and his academics (whose political commentary on the 1980s
is often dubious) also convincingly identify straight-to-video erotic thrillers
as the disreputable offspring of film noir and hardboiled pulp on the male side
and gothic romance on female side. (However, class envy played little role in
the genre’s success. The characters’ luxurious lifestyles were just a further
dimension of its voyeurism.)
Indeed,
voyeurism often factored very directly in the storylines, but they were not
X-rated. They were “naughty” rather than “dirty” movies. Yet, many of the actresses
who frequently appeared in these films have had to push back when they were unfairly
labeled “porn stars,” like Amy Lindsay (whose credits also include guest shots
on Star Trek: Voyager, Silk Stockings, and Pacific Blue), who
explains what it was like to be smeared with the “p” word when she appeared as
an average voter in a commercial for Ted Cruz. Give Penta credit for covering
this incident fairly.
