Angels Crest (2011)
** (out of 4)
A small community is ripped apart when a father (Thomas Dekker) is charged with negligent homicide after his three-year-old son dies. The two were out on a trip when the father decided to go check something out and leave the kid sleeping in the truck. The son managed to get out of the vehicle, get lost and the next day he is discovered dead. After the father is charged a whole group of people act differently to the events. I'm sure director Gaby Dellal had high hopes for this film and I'm sure the subject matter was something very close to her but she should have requested a re-write because the screenplay here is a complete mess that thinks it's something deep but at the end of the picture you realize that it's nothing but one shallow character and situation after another. There's no question that 100% of the blame must go towards the screenplay because every single one of the characters are shallow, boring and it's impossible to care for them. As I watched the movie I kept wondering what emotion I was supposed to be feeling, who was I supposed to be feeling it for and there are just scenes that take place, take you down one direction and then it just cuts off and you're sitting there wondering what the entire point was. We see the father struggle over guilt. Understandable. We learn that the child's mother is a worthless piece of drunk trash. There's a restaurant owner (Mira Sorvino) who has some of her own secrets. There's a lesbian couple who can't agree whether the dad is to blame. For some reason one of the lesbian's sons shows up and of course he hates gay people. There's even the father's best friend who just happens to be sleeping with the mother. All of these characters enter, say dialogue but you're never quite sure why they're there and in the end none of their stories come together for anything. You even have Jeremy Piven playing the D.A. who has his own past that he's hiding from. I'm sure the point of the film was to try and show what one event would have on a large group of people but the film is a complete failure. I will say that the opening ten-minutes were effect but this is due mostly to the subject matter. Seeing such a young kid die isn't easy to watch so of course it's going to be disturbing. Everything that follows is just one big mess. Performances are decent at best but you can tell they're drowning as it seems none of the actors know what to do and they appear to just go around without cause. ANGELS CREST has an interesting idea but sadly it goes nowhere and the film runs out of gas even before it can get going.
