williamspillman

I saw Coyote Cage at its world premier, so this is a very early review. It's a micro-budget horror/thriller/drama that punches well above its budget. The writing and directing are good-to-excellent, and the acting is far above what you expect to see in a film with a budget this low. When all I can nitpick is little things like the lighting and color correction of one shot here and there, it's a pretty great indie movie.

The film follows a diverse group of illegal immigrants crossing the U. S. border from Mexico who end up in the very real and all-too-common situation of being tormented in a stash house so the cartel behind their "coyote" (the term for a guide who helps illegals cross the border for a fee) can extort their families. While there is plenty of torture and death, the movie avoids depicting the sexual violence that often happens in these stash houses in real life, though it does make note of it in the introduction. There are some decent action scenes as well as gore, torture, and suspense, making this a movie that's hard to fit into a single genre.

The three actors with the most lines are all top-notch, especially the villain, played by Carlos Enrique Almirante, a veteran Spanish-language actor in his first English-language lead role. The whole movie hinges on his performance and he delivers. The only sub-par acting is from a couple of very minor characters who are only in one or two scenes each.

The film is far from flawless, but the flaws all come from the tiny budget and are still very few. The lighting in one of the outdoor night scenes is overly harsh, as such scenes usually are in micro-budget films because the lighting setup and cameras required for shooting a dark-looking nighttime scene outdoors, where you can still see what's happening, can cost more than this entire film. This is a flaw you see in many films with the much greater budget required to qualify as a B-movie, so it's hard to fault a micro-budget film for it. There are a few moments of "just okay" acting, and the gunshots and gunshot wounds are plug-ins, though they're well-done plug-ins. Using realistic guns and squibs with proper safety procedures for even one shot would probably cost more than this entire movie. Despite the budget, there are decent practical effects, including a couple of very nice gore shots that wouldn't be out of place in a Hollywood horror film.

The sound system and/or acoustics in the theater where I saw this was pretty poor, so I can't speak to the sound design if seen with a good system. The movie was shot digitally and the color correction necessary for that is mostly quite good, without the washed-out, too-much-brown you see in some movies that want to appear "gritty." Since the movie takes place almost entirely in the desert, there is more than enough brown already, so this is a very good thing. It does lead to one unnatural-looking gore shot early on where the fake blood didn't take to the color correction very well and appears far too bright, but the rest of the movie looks fine.

My rating of 8 is sort of an average. For a micro-budget indie film, it's more like a 9; for a drama or horror film in general, it's more like a 6.5-7. It's hard to say who I'd recommend this movie to because it fills so many niches. It has elements of torture-horror (like the Saw movies,) thrillers, action, drama, and even a dash of documentary because it's based on a real but not well-known situation that affects thousands of people each year. If some of those are things you like, or if you just want some entertainment while learning a bit about the border-crossing experience, see it when it hits the festivals or streaming services.

This is one of the best noir films I've seen. The plot and writing are top-notch, and the cinematography makes this movie look like it had a much higher budget than it actually did. The lead actor, Samson Snell, is nearly perfect and needs to be in more films. This is a better movie than most major-studio movies released in the last 5 years.

That said, if I were to score this a s a "movie" in general, rather than as an "indie movie," I'd give it four stars rather than five, because it's not perfect, just very good. I'm one of those hard-to-please critics who only give 5 stars to near-perfect movies, and this one has some minor flaws. The lead actress is good in most scenes, but in some, especially opposite Snell, her acting seems a bit forced. There are also some brief appearances by the boss character that are a little too over-the-top for my taste in a noir film. As an indie film, these are more than compensated for by the rest of the production, though.

Plot (no spoilers): The movie follows bounty hunter Nick Alice, who may be a little too nice for his line of work, as he meets and gets entangled with socialite Madison Campbell, who has a rich father and serious issues. Through numerous twists and turns and some non-linear storytelling, we learn some dark secrets and see things go very wrong for both of them. The film keeps you guessing as to how it will end, even though it starts with a very telling opening shot.

The story and script are genuinely top-notch, better than the vast majority of films, regardless of budget, and the camerawork is just as good. Devin O'Leary (writer) and Ariel Rakes (cinematographer), deserve to work in Hollywood, it would improve the general quality of Hollywood movies.

The sound design is good, as is the music, but I, like many people, only really notice those things when something goes wrong, so I don't feel qualified to critique them much beyond the fact that nothing went wrong.

For his first feature film, director/editor Michael Perez does a great job. Some of the shots and scene compositions are excellent, and they are all at least competent. I love to nitpick mistakes in movies, and the only thing I can find to nitpick is a minor detail that 99.9% of people will never even notice. The plot is complex and twisty enough that it would be easy to screw things up, but it all works flawlessly.

Overall, this movie is absolutely worth your time, even if you're not a big fan of the noir genre (I'm not).