VODepths: What to See (and Avoid) on Demand This Week

This week’s low-profile VOD releases warn viewers about the risks of postpartum depression, unseen kidnappers, and a polluted, corporate-controlled future — with no respite even when going on vacation.

Last Known Location (VOD November 15): Director Danny Donnelly’s plodding kidnap thriller attempts to bring more well-rounded development to its victim characters, but only ends up with tedious filler that makes the grim trauma porn even grimmer. Donnelly plays the sadistic criminal who locks up three women in his suburban Philadelphia basement, and the director initially obscures his own face, in a tactic that seems designed to shift the focus away from the psychotic villain. The movie then abandons that approach in its second half, undermining its theoretical good intentions and turning into a bargain-basement police procedural. Two of the women get wistful flashbacks about their pre-kidnapping lives, while a third spends half the time in a drawn-out romantic storyline before finally ending up exactly where the audience knows she’ll be. The acting is uniformly terrible, and Donnelly and writer Aimee Theresa (who also plays one of the victims) have a misguided understanding of police investigations. Instead of uplifting their female characters, they just drag out their painful ordeals, to no discernible purpose. Grade: C-

La Palisiada (Film Movement Plus November 15): Maybe someone with an extensive understanding of Ukrainian history and culture could parse the country’s official entry for this year’s Oscars, but most international viewers are likely to be completely baffled by director and co-writer Philip Sotnychenko’s inscrutable drama. Before its title-card drop 20 minutes in, La Palisiada is a contemporary story about one couple’s deteriorating relationship, culminating in a sudden act of violence. It then shifts back in time to 1996 to focus on the couple’s respective fathers, both involved in the investigation of a police officer’s murder. Sotnychenko seemingly does everything he can to obscure even basic details, though, and the characters’ positions, motivations, and connections are often impossible to work out. He shoots in a shaky handheld style that sometimes appears to be intended as found footage but at other times clearly could not be. While it’s occasionally evocative of the post-Soviet chaos of 1990s Ukraine, La Palisiada is largely too opaque to convey much of anything to anyone not already in the know. Grade: C

Worst Laid Plans (VOD November 22): This vacation-themed horror anthology boasts a unique hook, with each segment based on one of the short stories from the book of the same name. That keeps Worst Laid Plans more cohesive than a lot of scattered indie horror omnibus movies, but it doesn’t make the individual pieces any more entertaining. All three segments offer slow wind-ups to fairly obvious stingers, which would be more effective at shorter length, perhaps with another story or two added in. The first two segments are straightforward Creepshow-style tales with weak acting but endearingly ridiculous low-fi creature reveals, which are amusing if not particularly scary. The third segment, adapted by Jeremy Herbert from his own short story, takes a more oblique, meditative approach to its relatively grounded material, which proves more frustrating than rewarding. There are plenty of stories left to adapt from the Worst Laid Plans book, so maybe another edition could produce more satisfying results. Grade: C


The Fix (VOD November 22): The dystopian future in this South African sci-fi thriller is superficially timely but poorly defined, as a vague “toxin” has polluted the world’s atmosphere and forced people to wear cool cyberpunk-ish masks every time they go outside. Model Ella (Grace Van Dien) inadvertently takes an experimental drug that gives her apparent superpowers and immunity to the toxin, but also makes her a target for the standard evil corporation that wants to control the supply. Ella’s powers are mostly silly, and Van Dien makes for an unconvincing warrior badass. Writer-director Kelsey Egan clumsily aims for deeper meaning, but the recurring theme about Ella’s mutations challenging her fragile body image is underdeveloped. From a practical standpoint, covering the characters’ faces so extensively makes them tough to identify at times, and the producers should have sprung for extra ADR to avoid so much muffled dialogue. It’s hard to buy into a grand, world-changing adventure that’s just characters running in circles spouting unintelligible nonsense. Grade: C

Witches (MUBI November 22): Writer, director, editor, and subject/narrator Elizabeth Sankey has such an impressive command of montage and rhythm in this engrossing essay film that it takes a while to realize that her two main ideas don’t always connect. She opens by describing her fascination with the pop-culture depiction of witches, making a strong case that such depictions have perpetuated sexist ideas, even in the guise of empowerment. She then shifts gears to focus on a highly personal story about postpartum depression and the ordeal she went through following the birth of her son. As she and other women recount their harrowing experiences, Sankey continues to interweave movie clips, which often serve to deftly illustrate her points. Although she eventually connects postpartum mental illness with the historical persecution of witches, the two topics only lightly intersect. While she may underserve part of her subject matter, Sankey still finds an engaging way to present a difficult, sensitive topic, reaching viewers more viscerally than she could solely with talking-head interviews. Grade: B

Josh Bell is a freelance writer and movie/TV critic based in Las Vegas. He's the former film editor of 'Las Vegas Weekly' and has written about movies and pop culture for Syfy Wire, Polygon, CBR, Film Racket, Uproxx and more. With comedian Jason Harris, he co-hosts the podcast Awesome Movie Year.

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