Reviewed by Lamar Kukuk
7/27/11
Reviewed
based on a DVD screener provided by the filmmakers
It’s that rare movie that’s
both relentlessly original and still expressible through an Old School
high concept blurb that references another movie to which it bears no resemblance.
Missing Pieces, the feature directorial debut of Kenton Bartlett,
packs astonishing production value and even a couple familiar actors into
a reported $80,000 budget. But his greatest accomplishment is the
modern low-budget filmmaker’s best friend, a palpable sense of dread generated
by slicing and dicing his narrative in such a way that we’re kept pleasantly
off-balance. Missing Pieces is an interesting combination
of the thoughtful, the uplifting and the downright creepy, and while it
occasionally struggles with the juxtaposition of the later two, it never
stops being compelling precisely because it’s so unpredictably offbeat.
And it’s a whole lot like Saw with emotions instead of blood.
Through a swirl of past and
present events, this much is clear: David Lindale (Mark Boone Junior)
suffered brain damage in a catastrophic automobile accident. Girlfriend
Delia (Melora Walters) tried her best to make things work, but he’s just
not the same David anymore: he no longer has any interest in or understanding
of her art, and his obsessive behavior is more than a little creepy.
When she leaves, he turns that obsession onto getting her back, and with
that goal in mind, he abducts two young people who work at stops on his
route as a delivery man. Maggie (Taylor Engel) and Daylen (Daniel
Hassel) are both in deep states of ennui thanks to the tragic home lives
they’ve sort of escaped, but David has planned a series of activities (which
eerily mirror Delia’s paintings) to help them bond. If they don’t
fall in line, they’re knocked cold by the drug-dispensing anklets he’s
locked on each of them. As we learn more about what brought them
all to this moment, Maggie and Daylen begin to develop feelings for each
other. But just what is the mysterious man who’s always photographing
them from a distance planning for his captives?
It’s easy to imagine Missing
Pieces’ plot as a really bad romantic comedy (Kate and Matthew’s friends
kidnap them and put them through a series of bonding ordeals for their
own good while “Sweet Home Alabama” plays early and often on the soundtrack),
but what’s most interesting about this story is that David’s plans are
truly the product of a damaged mind, and no matter what positive results
they could end up having, they’re still seriously insane. As a result,
there’s no way for us to tell if he plans to thank his lab rats for their
trouble with a ticket to Happily Ever After or a bullet to the brain.
Boone Junior holds up his end of the bargain splendidly: while it’s
hard not to feel for a sad sack guy who’s desperate to get his girl back
(and he IS brain-damaged after all), there’s also no way I’d want to stand
next to David in an elevator. And Bartlett plays lots of nice tricks
with our expectations, often leaving us waiting for a seeming eternity
to find out the captives’ fates while other flashbacks hold court.
Taking a page from Lost,
that flashback structure is at least as interested in telling us how his
characters ended up being the kind of people who’d find themselves in their
situation as the logistics of that situation (although, for my money, David’s
Master Plan could have stood to be a little more vague once it’s laid out:
not sure I believe he’d have written down EVERYTHING that’s on that flowchart).
And it’s just as important as understanding David’s one-dimensional worldview
that we have a sense of just how beaten down by their lives Maggie and
Daylen were. I thought it was really interesting how the better I
got to know them in the past, the more I liked them when we caught up with
them again in the present. Engel and Hassel are nice finds who do
very well with the emotional heavy lifting of their backstories and strike
real sparks as a screen couple. I just wish they’d had a little more
luck conveying the unease of their situation. If you’ve been kidnapped
by a creepy guy who’s knocking you out with drugs and dropped you in the
middle of nowhere to watch you with a video camera, I don’t care how good
his icebreakers are, you’re still going to be more than a little freaked
out. Ava Kelley hits just the right note as the voice of a series
of motivational tapes David relentlessly listens to while plotting to do
something they would never, ever recommend.
On a technical level, the
movie is really impressive, with Jonathan Arturo’s cinematography (there
are some seriously beautiful shots in this movie), Richey Rynowski’s score
(“Additional Music by Athletics”, although I’m not entirely sure what that
means) and Bartlett’s editing working together to set that all-important
tone of low-budget unease. I keep hitting the budget because it figures
so prominently in the movie’s promotional materials, but to look at it,
you’d really never know Missing Pieces cost any less than any typical
indie at its ambition level.
I got an early look at Missing
Pieces shortly after the final cut was completed, so I’ll watch with
interest as it searches for a distributor. This is a movie that could
actually make some noise on the art house circuit, with just enough horror
elements to interest a wider audience in its character-driven love story,
the same sort of formula that made the admittedly superior Black
Swan an awards season smash. In a perfect world, viewers could
see it cold like I did and get the full impact of its unique setup, but
it’s not like some guy’s gonna grab you, drug you, throw you in a van and
make you watch some indie movie nobody’s described to you… at least I hope
not! |
