The Ruse

I watched The Ruse (2024) in theaters last night. The story follows a woman desperate for work who lands a recently vacated caretaker position. She soon discovers that the woman she's caring for is far more than she bargained for-and may be connected to the mysterious disappearance of the previous caretaker.

The film is written and directed by Stevan Mena (Malevolence) and stars Veronica Cartwright (Alien), Michael Steger (90210), Madelyn Dundon (Lucky Louie), and Drew Moerlein (Bloodline Killer).

This is a movie that feels uneven in just about every way. Veronica Cartwright delivers a fantastic performance, keeping the film intense, unpredictable, and charged with uncertainty. Her dialogue, mannerisms, and delivery are consistently strong. Unfortunately, Madelyn Dundon's performance is noticeably stiff, often coming across as inauthentic. Her facial expressions and body language frequently don't align with what's happening in the scene, though it's hard to say how much of that stems from her acting versus the writing.

I did enjoy the cinematography-there are some clever uses of black-and-white visuals and well-chosen camera angles that effectively build tension. However, the kill scenes rely on cutaways, which I always find frustrating. That said, the ending is pretty fun and left me wishing the rest of the film had taken more kills along the way.

In conclusion, The Ruse has enough worthwhile elements to hold your attention, but not enough to stand out in the genre. I'd give it a 5.5-6/10 and recommend seeing it once.

"The Ruse" is an excellent thriller that I would very much like to recommend!

The Plot: A new caretaker, Dale (Madelyn Dundon), is hired to take care of elderly Olivia Stone (Veronica Cartwright) due to being diagnosed with dementia. While taking care of Olivia, she realizes that the caretaker before her, Tracy (Kayleigh Ruller) has disappeared without a trace, leaving Dale to piece together what happened to Tracy while trying to take great care of Olivia.

I am such a huge fan of Stevan Mena's works "Malevolence" and "Malevolence 2: Bereavement." I thought this was very engaging throughout, and this movie is directed, produced, written and even the music is done by Mena! I think that is super awesome that he has lots of control for what he wants to make! Lastly, I think these movies by Stevan Mena has me thinking he is one of the most underrated horror movie directors out there!

9/10 stars for me.

I went into this movie only seeing the trailer and it seemed pretty interesting as I do like thrillers and mysteries. Had nothing to do on a Thursday afternoon so thought I'd give it a shot. It seemed promising for the first about 45 minutes to one hour, but the third act fell apart for me. I'm not really giving spoilers here, just wanted to give my opinion of what I thought of the movie and to be honest could've been better. I thought it was just the theater I was in, but reading a review from screen rant I see that there were audio issues in the movie. I don't understand what happened, but mic cutouts and sudden drops in the audio were kind of strange. Also, some of the action scenes felt very low budget and hacky. This movie felt more like a straight to streaming movie and not a movie theater release. They were only three other people with me in the theater and only one showing today so maybe that could've tipped me off. Not great, not the worst I've ever seen just merely OK, a premise that had promise.

Stevan Mena did a phenomenal job with this mystery thriller, at one point I felt like I was watching it adaptation of a Stephen King novel and other points felt like pure old school Hitchcock Presents. It has all the typical tropes of a Hitchcock film with spot on pacing, and shot beautifully. There are a lot of twist and turns, in a unique setting, great tension building throughout the film. Cast was phenomenal, one thing Stevan Mena does well in all his films is find those untapped talents. Watch every single one of these unknown names in this movie, They all have a very bright future out of them.

I haven't been to the theatre in a long time, because movies today don't make you think.

I'm so tired of movies with all action and no story. The Ruse is a movie where you are compelled to pay attention and follow the plot. Great acting, great script, great ending with a twist. Sure, there are some violent scenes, but they aren't there just for the sake of it. You can tell there was a lot of thought to detail. This is how movies used to be. We need more of this. It's made so that you care about the charcters and what will happen, or can happen to them. This was well worth the price of admission.