DVD Review: ‘Sympathy’, Hitchcock Inspired Indie Horror
Sympathy (2007)
Vicious Circle Films
Directed by Andrew Moorman
Cast: Aaron Boucher, Steven Pritchard, Marina Shtelen
Review by Marc Patterson
Ever check into a cheap motel and wonder if anyone was murdered in the room you’re about to spend the night in? If you’re anything like me, then you certainly have. After all, aren’t cheap roadside motels places where bad things naturally go to happen? I know Psycho was made fifty years ago, but that film still feeds my paranoia about hole in the wall motels. (And literally holes in the walls where psychos are watching you.) Sympathy is a film that takes some inspiration from Hitchcock-directed films such as Psycho, Rope, and Dial M for Murder, portraying a heist gone wrong story with more twists than a Cirque du Soleil contortionist, all going down within the four walls of a single motel room, and centered on three characters with more secrets than the Vatican.
If the plot summary sounds ingenious enough from the exterior it’s because it kind of is. Creating a three-way suspensful thriller contained in a single room that will keep the audience engaged for an hour and a half is a feat. Everything falls on the shoulders of the cast to carry the film from beginning to end. Everything depends on quality of dialogue, storytelling ability, and sharp writing. Sadly, this film, the director, nor the cast had what it took. Hitchcock this isn’t. What Sympathy happens to be is ninety minutes of monotonous dialogue that generally goes nowhere until the final twenty minutes that explode into exposition heavy “action”. Blood and violence there is, but unfortunately making it to those final twenty minutes proved a near insurmountable task, and though the payoff was satisfying it was too late. I had long since lost interest, and worse – I had the whole bloody affair figured out.
Generally my criticism of Sympathy falls upon the poor scriptwriting over the poor acting, but there are times when I have to wonder which one was harder to endure. Conceptually it’s a great story, but it’s one that should have been a twenty minute short film, not a feature length snooze-a-thon. Whoever scripted the dialogue should have been the one shot in the arm and tied to the motel bed, rather than poor Marina, who suffered through most of the film in what must have been an uncomfortable position (handcuffed to the bed) and doused in fake blood. The problem with the dialogue? It was dry, unrealistic, and delivered with all the over-acted passion of a cheap dime-store pulp fiction character. In one word, it was BAD, almost embarrassing. And that’s not to say these are bad actors. All of them seemed to know what they were doing, but they were most certainly poorly directed. Worse, I hate chatty villains, but that’s all these pathetic characters do. Yakkety yak, yak, yak. Oh jesus fucking christ you’re boring me to death already! Someone just kill ME already. For a bunch of two dimensional criminals they sure had a lot to say. What was worse than the script and the acting was that at the end of the film (and no I won’t spoil it), everything seemed all for nothing. It was one big pointless story. I had to suffer through a ninety-minute power struggle for this ball busting ending?
Listen, I don’t think I need to carry on for you to get the gist of my opinion. My advice is simple. Don’t let the blood spattered poster and slick trailer fool you into thinking you’re going to see a riveting blood soaked violent thriller. You’re not. You’re not going to even see a good drama. Sure, I can see why the film is called Sympathy. I just wish that someone had some sympathy for me when it was being made.
Sympathy Trailer (Red Band) from Furnessville Pictures on Vimeo.
