Review of Angel

Angel (I) (2018)
3/10
The gamut of human emotions all the way from A to B.
23 July 2021
What's good about Angel? The picture quality is excellent. Locations are, in the main, interesting. The musical score is relevant and interesting. The plot premise could, under other circumstances, be passable. And, well, that's about it.

What's not so good about Angel? The cast. I'm certain that they gave it their all but the cast are uniformly inept. Everything from blocking, where the actors stand in a scene, to line delivery has student project written all over it. (Blocking is, admittedly, the directors job.)

Angel does establish a benchmark of sorts for politeness. Actors repeatedly and courteously wait for each other to finish lines before delivering their own. This leaves awkward silences scattered throughout the films 97 minutes.

The acting is stilted, very self-conscious, and so the characters unbelievable. Some cast members are better than other, Bradley A. Myers, might develop but he will need to avoid these types of films.

Even so, and as Dorothy Parker was said to observe of Katherine Hepburn, the entire cast generally run the full gamut of human emotions all the way from A to B.

The plot? After a massacre the remaining residents of the gentle town of Raven Rock pack-up and leave. Despite the abandoned town being securely locked random people start disappearing within its confines. A journalist and her friends investigate the disappearances. Written by Cheyenne Gordon and Tory Jones there is enough meat in this for a much better film.

Without giving too much away, there is a monster; a cheaply costumed, clumsy, and generally regrettable monster.

Tory Jones, the director has a bit of history in micro-budget genre films and has earned applause for some efforts. Angel is not an applaudable film. This project was crowd funded. The same cast and crew were in another Tory Jones Indy, The Wicked One, in 2017. It is a marginally better film with a not dissimilar plot. The point is, Jones et al can do it! Make a credible'ish' film that is. This makes Angel just that bit more disappointing.
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