Maury is a college outcast who gets a horrible prank pulled on him, so he agrees to let his new spectre-like friend kill off his enemies "in exchange" for an undisclosed favour.
I was pretty taken aback by this one. Overlooking the fact that it's shot on video and there's some definite sound issues (it would have benefited from looping in places), this little indie is a treat that hearkens back to the days of horror when character was more important than special effects (though the few effects in the film are fantastic). Zach Parker, along with his cast and crew, created magic out of virtually nothing.
There have been dead-on comparisons to CARRIE, which were what led me to the film, but I couldn't find it for rental anywhere so I finally bought it. For the first 20 minutes, I kept saying to myself, "This sucks, I wasted $12." The film crawls along at a snail's pace -- a lot of the early scenes lack scoring -- and it seems as if nothing is going to happen. If not for the fact that the actors could actually act and the direction was so good (the continuity is absolutely incredible), I might have hit the stop button and stuck this in the pile of discs that I'll never watch again... but something told me to stick with it. And I'm glad that I did. As I got further into the film, I realized that these boring scenes were establishing Maury's character, and the film would have greatly suffered without them -- though I think some underscoring might have helped. All of the characters are very selfish and self-involved, but instead of the usual set-up (here's the bad guy, you won't care when he's killed later), the characters are layered, very human, and you come to care about, and have pity for them.
Geez, what else can I say without spoiling the film? Sean Blodgett and Todd Richard Lewis both give incredible performances. Hell, all of the actors are great. Interestingly, seeing the extras on the disc (particularly a tour of the "Camp Inexchange" set), Blodgett is nothing at all like his character, which made me appreciate his performance a little bit more. Charismatic Lewis and Tiffany Wilson both breathe life into characters that could have been very one-note. Parker's direction is superb. Although he could have easily bogged down the film with roving camera-work, a lot of it's very stationary but still interesting to look at (which is something I don't think I've ever said). The climax of the film is wonderfully surreal, beautifully edited and fantastically scored. I sincerely hope that Parker goes on to bigger things.
Although it's wholly unoriginal, INEXCHANGE is a breath of fresh air when compared to the endless stream of horrible horror remakes that are coming out of Hollywood at the moment. It's a nice change of pace and highly recommended to fans of indies and old-school psychological horror.
