I am not prone to give films a 1-star review. As a film student from way back in the day, I understand the effort that goes into making a piece of fiction into a coherent (or not) film, and I very seldom find a film SO bad that it deserves the lowest possible score. Then along came "Grinder."
The film is not just badly written, acted, directed, and photographed, I can only think of ONE slightly redeeming feature and that is the performance by Tyler Austin, playing the protagonist, Luke. And that isn't saying much because he had very little to do, where he should have had A LOT of performance to give, but the script shut down anything we might have seen because it was so bland and uninteresting.
At only a, thankfully, 82-minute running time, I was STILL checking the time left, and that started at about 20 minutes in. The long, padding shots leading to nothing were annoying, and there were several of them. The camera is just sitting on a tripod while an actor emotes into it. That's NOT interesting if there is no point and there was never a point. In fairness, although others have said that the actor/director playing Tim showered innumerable times during the film -- again, stupid filler footage -- it only happened twice, but again, just as filler for no real reason. He runs. He's sweaty. He showers. We don't need to be there for it all.
The film should have been, at best, a short film less than 30 minutes long, if it had to be made at all. Jon Fleming, of "Dante's Cove" fame, was ridiculous in his attempt to "be mean." I don't think he has that capability and an extended scene of him trying to do so just comes off as cringing to the point of turning to stone. Skip this. It won't even rise to the level of a cult classic. It's not something you can say is so bad, it's good. It's just really bad.
