By Geno McGahee
When I first began watching SEE JANE RUN, I was incredibly optimistic. It started out with Joe Estevez as Andrew Kessler, SR. Now Estevez is a great actor and in the brief period of time on screen, he nails the role, and compliments to the Director here, Ryan Webb…this was an incredibly amusing and well shot scene. A shovel comes out of nowhere and nails Estevez in the head and drops him to the ground. Then another shot comes out of nowhere. It was hilarious! Now, I figured that this was a whodunit because the killer was never shown and starting this way was a great way to begin. I had very high hopes…but it falls apart pretty quickly.
We now have four friends on a road trip. We have a dysfunctional couple with a girl, Randi (Samantha Bianchini), that has blatant cheating eyes, but James (John Rodriguez) all but ignores it. When they pick up a hitchhiker, Tyler (Jeremy Steel), Randi is nearly all over him and James just allows it. He doesn’t say a word and is very affectionate to her, which is just amazing. His buddy Neil (Kevin Haberer) doesn’t even tell him that Randi is not exactly true to him. Some friend! He may be a little preoccupied with trying to score with the hot chick in the back seat, Jane (Jennifer Clary). She is somewhat withdrawn and Neil seems too nerdy to even have a shot, and he’s not really pushing the issue either.
The group is sightseeing and is informed of a barbeque place which appeals to the hungry group, but when they arrive at a house, they are confused. Where is the BBQ place? Where is the god damn BBQ place? That fat fuck mechanic lied to them! Sorry…got a little off track.
Andrew Kessler, JR., (Sasha Adreev) runs out and meets them at the car and invites them in and then out to his backyard for some good eating. This is where the film dies. There seems to be a lot of confusion…the filmmaker doesn’t really know what he wants this to be. There are times when it seems to be a whodunit and then it just turns into a straight crazy killer story.
The film begins with a great pace and then we get an unknown killer taking out the group inside the house, but the identity of the killer is so obvious that you don’t think that it could possibly be him, but it is. As a death is taking place, Kessler starts hitting up on Jane and she is flattered but he begins to weird her out when he starts talking religion. Religion doesn’t get you into anyone’s pants…well, Priests may disagree, but outside of horny molester priests, religion is not a good angle to get some nookie. It’s all about the nookie, right?
So, we go from whodunit, to I don’t know what it is, to torture movie, but before we get there, Jane finds Randi nailing Tyler on the kitchen floor and then climbs into bed with James to sort of even things out. Now keep in mind that James turned down sex with Randi, which upset her and drove her into the arms of Taylor, and now he turns down sex with the super hot Jane? What the freaking hell is his problem?! Maybe he’s not playing for that team. Maybe he was waiting for Neil or Tyler to crawl into his bed. Who knows? I can’t think of anything else that would prevent him from nailing one of those chicks. Maybe he had the shits. Yeah, maybe that. That makes a shitload of sense. (No pun intended)
I loved the first 20 minutes of this movie but the rest of it drags and doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. What a disappointment. This film had a whole lot of potential, but it fizzled. For a near zero budget movie, the acting was superb (especially John Rodriguez…great screams), and it was shot very well, but it couldn’t save it. I recommend this movie for the Estevez death scene, but other than that, I would avoid it.
Scared Stiff Rating: 4.5/10. Disappointing.
