Spree

2008

United States

Horror

Phantom Limb Productions

Produced, directed, written by Mark Jones

Web: http://www.myspace.com/spreemovie

Spree is a rather nasty film about a group of four loser students. In a drunken and depressed mood after a series of personal problems, they decide to liven up their forthcoming cross country trip by killing a person in each state they pass through. They divide into two teams after agreeing on a set of rules, such as there must be photographic evidence of each kill. The two teams then go their separate way and will meet in San Francisco a week later. The winning team gets to walk away and the losing team must confess their crimes.

One team consists of Wes and Alex. In the morning the game doesn’t seem like anything more than a drunken idea to Alex, but Wes fully intends to go through with it. His first victim is a hitchhiker based to death in cold blood. Alex doesn’t know how to handle it, but when he is bashed by a group of rednecks in Alabama he joins in willingly out of revenge. His setup to make the killing look like a suicide shows that he may have a hidden talent for murder after all.

From here it just becomes easier, particularly if the victim is a revenge target – someone who scammed Wes on eBay, someone who barges in front of them as they are about to enter a shop.

They arrive in California and wait five days for their friends to arrive. The other team has been delayed by car trouble, so Wes and Alex are already on edge and tense. The second team then reveals that they haven’t killed anyone, since when they sobered up they thought it was just a drunken joke. They are horrified at the killings, and although they have technically lost the game they say they must turn their friends in to the police. At this point Wes snaps and it all falls apart.

For an independent the film is quite high quality. Mark Jones has written a strong story and filmed it well. The relative inexperience of the actors shows through sometimes, but they all turn in a credible performance. Jones has a few films to his credit already and Spree can only enhance his reputation. About the only negative I could find was rather more swearing than necessary, although at the beginning of the film it helped to show just how big a loser each one was. Even the bloodshed is not excessive to the point that it detracts from the film.

There is one curious part to the film. Jones plays the part of one of the friends, and by the end of the film I could have shot him myself. His character is a self-centred, pompous little braggart with an overinflated opinion of his abilities. I had him marked as the most likely to start the killing spree. I would have thought the director would have kept one of the better roles for himself, but Jones seems to have cast all the right people in all the roles. All the roles are well cast so Jones knows what he is doing.

Spree is not a nice film, but in this genre it is well made and definitely worth viewing

This review will appear in Volume 2 No.3 (2009) of the digital and print edition of Synergy Magazine.

If you came to this page directly (and missed our menu), click here to go to the Synergy Magazine front page. (http://www.synergy-magazine.com)