By Geno McGahee
Just released on DVD and Blu-Ray, HIGH VOLTAGE is a stylish thriller with some pretty good star power behind it, including star of SCREAM, David Arquette, and the star of VACANCY, Luke Wilson. Those horror credentials are pretty good and it’s just a sampling of their work. Both Arquette and Wilson have presence and they both seemed to have liked their roles in this film.
The film has a film noir sort of approach with Arquette narrating and telling the story. A grizzled former rock star, Jimmy Kleen (Arquette), sees a chance to be reborn and live vicariously through a new band that he leads with his discovery, Rachel (Allie Gonino). Scott (Ryan Donowho) plays the guitar and tries to find the balance with his family and the band and there is resistance much like there is with Rachel’s mother, Barb (Perrey Reeves).
Kleen visits an old friend and record producer, Rick (Luke Wilson), and he soon finds out that he is well behind the times. Kleen has no idea how to approach selling the band with the current state of social media and his demands are thrown out immediately. There is a long way for the group to go and Kleen desperately needs the band to work.
After a failed concert, Rachel and her mother are struck by lightning. Barb passes away and Rachel dies but comes back to life with a set of new powers stemming from her lightning strike. She finds her musical groove and she can also zap people to death with her death kiss. The group begins gaining popularity and Rachel becomes friskier on stage. That always sells and the music is pretty good in this. Typically when you get a movie about a band, the music isn’t very good, but they did a good job here balancing it all out.
The new Rachel is now a walking advertisement for the rock music business, bringing the sex, drugs and rock and roll. Kleen had created a monster and the more progress they made, the crazier Rachel gets, but the band keeps making it bigger and bigger. The issue is that the problems with Rachel get bigger and bigger and she is becoming more vicious and full of herself, leading to a violent climax.
HIGH VOLTAGE is a film that will be either loved or hated, I think. It is a mixture of a noir and a raw indie music documentary and it works. Arquette was very good in this and really was right for the role and so too was Gonino. She was able to transition from a good girl to the bad evil rock chick very well and believably. Luke Wilson, although his role was relatively small, was memorable and did not phone it in. HIGH VOLTAGE is not a slasher horror film. It is a film about making a monster and it’s done very well.
I recommend HIGH VOLTAGE. Great performances across the board and an interesting story presented in a very unique way. It worked for me.
