Fall Down Dead

Fall Down Dead (2007)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Silly horror film about a young woman (Dominique Swain) who witnesses The Picasso Killer (Udo Kier) who has been stalking the city. She's able to get away and call police but there's a rolling blackout sweeping the city so she must stay inside a locked building with a group of other people and of course the killer gets in trying to get rid of them all. FALL DOWN DEAD is yet another in a seemingly endless string of slasher pictures where you get the feeling of deja vu from start to finish. I will say that director Jon Keeyes manages to make the film look very professional and I thought he handled the opening sequence quite well but when you're dealing with a routine screenplay that gives you everything you'd expect and in the order that you'd expect it, there's really nothing anyone could do. The screenplay pretty much goes from A to Z just like you'd expect it to. You know who's going to live. You know who's going to die. You know various twists that's going to happen in the story. You know pretty much everything including how a victim is going to escape the killer and reach her car only to have it not start. It's really too bad that the screenplay goes for the routine and cliché moments from start to finish because I think a rewrite could have made for a better result. Another problem is the story itself, which never really makes too much sense. The police inside this building want to protect the Swain character because she can identify the killer. However, instead of leaving the building and taking her somewhere they decide to just wait around inside the building with the killer instead of leaving and getting her to safety. The excuse given is that the cops want to call a police squad in but after the first two or three people get slaughtered it looks like they'd just leave. Another annoying thing is various scenes that just make you want to jump through the screen and punch the characters. Everyone is fighting for their lives yet it seems each one of them has time to stop what they're doing, talk about marriage, their past and their plans for the future. These moments are just so annoying that you really wonder why no one in the production stood up and asked what was going on. Performances are decent at best with Swain certainly doing the best work here. Kier is also effective in his part as that great voice does wonders. David Carradine appears in one of his many 15-minute cameos that he got after KILL BILL. Even he is featured in a rather stupid sequence where Swain in banging on the office door and screaming for her life. They have her playing terror, the music is that pure thriller mode and yet they have Carradine playing the scene for laughs. It just doesn't add up but then again not much does in this film.

A killer is after some people in a building while the power is out. That's it. Nothing much else happens. David Carradine's character is obnoxious. The other actors do their best, but everybody has to act like the killer is some invincible threat, and act really dumb. And they do their best to stretch this out to 90 minutes, but the script is very thin. Might have worked as a TV episode? But it's a pretty weak movie.

I hadn't even heard about this 2007 movie titled "Fall Down Dead" before now in 2020, when I stumbled upon it by sheer luck. The title initially was the thing that caught my attention, and seeing it being a horror movie, of course I would find myself sitting down to watch it.

Then I saw that the movie had Dominique Swain, Udo Kier and David Carradine on the cast list, so I thought it would actually have a possibility of being an interesting movie. So I must admit that my hopes were up for writer Roy Sallows and director Jon Keeyes' movie.

However, the title "Fall Down Dead" actually depicts pretty much what the movie does. The storyline was only vaguely interesting, but it was quickly losing its momentum as the plot unfolded on the screen. In fact, I managed to endure 1 hour of the movie before turning it off out of complete and utter boredom.

"Fall Down Dead" is a slow paced movie, and it feels even slower because of the rather pointless and very boring plot that the movie had.

My rating of "Fall Down Dead" lands on a mere, but generous, three out of ten stars. This movie was hardly worth the effort, and it was a swing and a miss for the likes of Dominique Swain, Udo Kier and David Carradine.

I usually stay at the movies until the end, no matter how bad they are, but the incredibly stupid script, terribly bad acting and very very poor and lame storyline made me resist for only 3 quarters of the movie.

I just don't get it how so many people (about 140 at the time of this review) gave this piece of "art" 10's unless they are relatives to the actors or movie staff. Please don' be deceived and just ignore the 10's and you'll get a picture of how bad the movie really is.

This movie is an insult to an average people's intellect, and it's a real shame. Don't go !

In a big American city, the serial killer The Picasso Killer (Udo Kier) is terrorizing the dwellers and the police department does not have lead to find him. The bartender Christie Wallace (Dominique Swain) dreams on moving to the countryside with her six year-old daughter Zoe to have a peaceful life far from the violence of the city.

Late night of Christmas Eve, Christie leaves the Tides Bar where she works and walks back home. In an alley, she sees a woman dying covered on blood and The Picasso Killer sees Christie and chases her. She runs to a commercial building where the night watchman Wade (David Carradine) is reluctant to open the door and does not give credit to Christie. She calls the police and Detectives Stefan Kerchek (Mehmet Günsür) and Lawrence Kellog (R. Keith Harris) attend the call. When Christie tells that she can recognize the infamous serial-killer, there is a blackout, the phones are dead and the detectives cannot call the precinct. They lock the building waiting for reinforcement but sooner they find that The Picasso Killer has broken in the building and their lives are in danger.

The dull and lame "Fall Down Dead" has one of the worst screenplays I have ever seen. The plot begins with the free nudity of the character Marie, performed by Jennifer Alden and that does exist only to show her naked body in the bathroom. Then two experienced detectives and a security guard, all of them armed, are easily subdued by the serial-killer that is unarmed. The self-proclaimed The Picasso Killer tells that Christie would be his Mona Lisa; wouldn't be more appropriate the nickname The Leonardo da Vinci Killer? Last but not the least, Stefan Kerchek is shot three times, stabbed, falls from a significant height and is almost dying; out of the blue, he starts walking as if he would be healed in a laughable situation. My vote is one (awful).

Title (Brazil): "Isolados" ("Isolated")