 | MOVIE DETAILS • Name: Peppergrass • Year: 2021 • Country: USA • Director: Steven Garbas, Chantelle Han • Main cast: Chantelle Han, Charles Boyland, Michael Copeman, Philip Williams • Runtime: 94 minutes • Production company: BLS Productions, Barbet Films • TRAILER
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Peppergrass (2021) has all the ingredients for being an attractive thriller if only it was conceived as a short film.
The atmosphere created from the first instants of the movie until the final credits start to roll is dark and tense, especially thanks to the effort of the cinematographer Grant Cooper winner of the Best Cinematography in Non-Theatrical Feature in the Canadian Society of Cinematographers Awards. The work of the directors Steven Garbas and Chantelle Han (Han is also the main star in the film) is outstanding when it comes to the staging of the story, but too bad that story doesn’t have enough substance. In most of the movie, we find the protagonist by herself wounded in the middle of the woods trying to survive or involved in long conversations with the supporting characters that become inconsequential for the plot and the viewer.
Still, the starting point in Peppergrass (2021), although not the most original one, comes from an interesting twist. A woman restaurateur goes with a friend on a road trip to the middle of nowhere deep in the woods to find a man who has a priceless truffle. She is struggling in her business and that special ingredient opens a door of salvation for her. But the situation between the reclusive veteran and the two visitors goes wrong and ends in a gunfight. Now, with her wounded and lost in the woods, she must find a way to survive, try to save her friend, and escape from the strange man who is hunting her.
As mentioned before, this is a nice plot start for an exciting thriller. The problem is there is not much more after that. The entire movie is held on the visual and sound crafts to create the tense atmosphere, which indeed works, and the acting skills of Chantelle Han, present in the entire running time, in a remarkable performance that brought her the Best Actor award at the Nightmares Film Festival.
Terror Films is releasing Peppergrass (2021) on digital platforms in June, so it will become one more title in the never-ending list of available films we have at our demand. It is not one that will outstand from the rest, but it is not a painful watch; it can save an evening or night of craving for a movie easy to watch but also easy to forget.
RATE: 4/10
IMDB URL: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt13694196
