 | MOVIE DETAILS • Name: Deadline • Year: 2009 • Country: USA • Director: Sean McConville • Main cast: Brittany Murphy, Thora Birch, Marc Blucas • Runtime: 85 minutes • Production company: KRU Studios, Enso Entertainment, Films In Motion • TRAILER |
Deadline is one of these kind of movies that bring nothing new at all. The story is absolutely unoriginal, the twists don’t surprise anyone, and the frights are the same tricks we’ve seen a zillion other times.
Alice (the last role played by Brittany Murphy to be released before her tragic death) is a writer who gets confined into an abandoned house running away from some traumatic events to concentrate on finishing a job on time. But something in the house frightens her and she ends up discovering a box of tapes recorded by a young couple expecting a baby. First they look like a cute happily married couple, but things soon start to get complicated.
Along the whole picture, the feeling of this being a subproduct for TV is constant. Writer and director Sean McConville manages to steal and copy as much as possible until he builds a pastiche homage to nonsense. No matter if the actors try to do their best to give some dimension to the characters, or how beautifully photographed the insides of the abandoned victorian house are, the script is just so painfully ridiculous that makes any other effort to be merely anecdotic. Music, filming, the story, the frights, the makeup… it all looks like taken from the rutine box.
Perhaps the most interesting fact Deadline has is the presence of Thora Birch, a very talented actress who reached big recognition at the change of the century thanks from her fantastic performances in movies like American Beauty (1999), The Hole (2001) or Ghost World (2001), but that has since then been drifting in a sea of mediocre productions like this one we have in hands now. But even her outstanding performance can’t save this film to burn in the bonfire of mediocrity.
One can’t help but wondering if Deadline is basicly a failed attempt for Brittany Murphy to shine by her own, another try to get rid of the “pretty blonde with no talent” tag she got at the begining of her carreer by choosing the path of the always admired scream queens. But she just made the wrong choices. Because Deadline follows the trail of other horrible titles like Cherry Falls (2000) or Abandoned (2010). Far, very far from her most memorable roles in Sin City (2005) and 8 Mile (2002). I think this movie can even bore her most hardcore fans.
RATE: 3/10
IMDB URL: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1242618
