Dead & Gone

Horror / Suspense

Reel DVD

R4 DVD

First-time director Yossi Sasson has taken a story by the horror story writer Harry Shannon and turned it into quite a passable film. Now, if you are expecting a cheap buckets-of-blood film, this is not it. Cheap, certainly – the budget was reputedly around $500,000. There is blood but not in the quantities you would expect. Instead the film concentrates on the boundaries between sanity, hallucination and the supernatural.

Jack Wade is the toy boy of Frankie, a Hollywood executive who has slipped into a coma following her unsuccessful cosmetic surgery. Now Frankie’s insurance has run out, her remaining money is tied up by relatives who don’t want to see the toy boy get his hands on it, and Jack is nearly destitute. All he has to his name is an old shack up in the hills. He won it in a poker game and is unaware that it has a history. Forty years ago a man slaughtered his wife and family then shot himself in a strange moment of madness. Jack “kidnaps” Frankie, life support system and all, and takes her up to the shack.

Jack is not the altruistic guy he seems to be. He has been having an affair with a lawyer who is trying to get Frankie’s money for him. Jack’s probable intention is to turn off her life support and then he will have some legal claim on the estate.

At the cabin he uses the last of his money to pay the transporter and the nurse who accompanied him. He has to make up the nurse’s payment with a cheque, knowing it will bounce. He also meets the local redneck, Booger, whom he dislikes, and a female deputy sheriff that he would like to crack on to.

Before he can do much there are other things that concern him. His wife’s ghost? spirit? taunts him about his lawyer girlfriend. Or is it all developing in Jack’s mind? When the nurse returns with the bounced cheque he kills her and her ghost also starts to haunt Jack. Then a televangelist, Reverend Grass, seems to be taunting him too. It seems they are all urging jack to kill Frankie. Jack is on the verge of madness. When he finds Booger looking through his window one day he kills Booger as well, then his brother who comes seeking revenge. The bodies are piling up and still Jack is being taunted by their ghosts. In an effort to stop Frankie’s cruel teasing he turns off her life support. Then the deputy returns with a warrant for his arrest for kidnapping Frankie. The ghosts urge him to kill her as well. Is the history of the cabin sending him insane? Or are his ghosts real?

Quentin Jones as Jack has to carry most of the story himself, mostly because the other characters make brief appearances then die. Although he is a competent actor he is somewhat let down by the plot, which isn’t really original, and the direction which could be tighter. Fans of blood and gore will be disappointed. Sasson has concentrated on the plot rather than the special effects and explored the development of the onset of madness. It is not really a horror story as such – the ghosts would need much more development - but it fits the suspense-with-a-bit-of-horror category well. I enjoyed it.

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