Possibly the worst short film I have ever had to endure in my life. Thirty six minutes and forty two seconds of my life that I will never get back.
The film sees a group of friends, or relatives, or something like that (it's not very clear) meet for Christmas dinner. When a series of unexplained and ridiculous murders occur. The film loosely follows the traffic officer, Steve Brewer (Max Fury) as he tries to uncover the "mystery" of who committed the murders. Eventually, after about twenty six minutes of interviews with the cast paired with very awkward acting, we are left to sit through seven minutes of Steve talking to the remaining members of the cast explaining who committed the murders. None of what is explained is even referenced in the movie rendering the first twenty six minutes completely irrelevant. If that wasn't enough, the final scene then reveals the ending that makes everyone drop their heads in disbelief. We find that the whole movie was a dream from the perspective of the old Uncle Albert (Malcolm Drizen). Though I suppose this is a good excuse for the dreadful writing taking place in the first thirty three minutes of the film as dreams don't make sense at all.
The film was directed by George Watkins, founder of GW Studios. Watkins direction was unimaginative, unoriginal and honestly, the entire film looked as though the cast had not been given any direction at all. The job of a director is to supervise and instruct the cast and other members of the crew in a play, film or similar production. Watkins film "Death at Christmas" looks as though he left the cast and crew to do as they pleased with the film and didn't care about the end result.
Daniel Ellis cast the film with a very average to poor cast of nine middle aged actors who had not had any experience in acting at all. This is shown in most of their poor performances in their roles giving very limited facial expression and very neutrally delivered dialogue. Ursular Emjay gave an unconvincing portrayal as Edith Hanson applying middle school level acting techniques such as clasping hand over mouth after witnessing murder, and Ralph Toppin gave an uneven performance as Nigel Montgomery coming across as very awkward and delivering dialogue unrealistically in some situations he was put in. For example, when accused of murder he does not seem at all phased and seems to be reciting lines he has read on a script. Though I must say, Malcolm Drizen gives, by far, the best performance in his role of Uncle Albert. Although some of his lines are written quite poorly, his portrayal of every one of them is believable and I have to say he is the only actor I truly believed could have actually been in the situation he was written into.
The cinematography and production design by George Watkins and Matt Vivian respectively was the best part of this production. The film was shot surprisingly well considering the quality of the rest of the film's aspects and showed some very creative camera work which made for a visually pleasing film. It's a shame that the rest of the film's aspects were not up to this standard. However, there were a few downfalls in the camera placement as sometimes characters heads were cut out of shots.
Editing by George Watkins was a fairly average standard. It was not, by any means, up to scratch, but was not the weakest part of the film. The pacing of the film seemed very slow and there were a lot of pauses between characters dialogue and reactions to certain events. This not only makes the general feel of the scene very awkward for the audience, but also takes the audience straight out of the scene. The scenes seemed to flow fairly well into one another but the scenes themselves could have been a lot smoother.
The film was supposed to be set in a large house, but was quite clearly shot in some form of publicly accessible events building shown by all of the fire exit and no smoking signs, and obvious promotional boards that have been terribly covered with white sheets and clothing pegs. The set was badly chosen by George Watkins and Daniel Ellis. Again, it takes the audience straight out of the film and makes them question yet another asset of this film.
The music by Alexander Myttion was well composed and enhanced the scene the first time I heard it, but after the same piece of music had been played in almost every scene, it became a lot less special very quickly and did not often fit the theme of the scene.
I touched on it a little at the beginning of the review, but the writing by George Watkins was, by far, the worst part of this whole film and the biggest let down of all. The script didn't make sense and seemed to make up it's own rules as it went along and just made up reasons that certain events happened when they did without any evidence or explanation. Like for example, "Me and Emma had been getting along famously, all night, but you couldn't keep your jealousy hidden, of our relationship. So you killed her out of spite." We are just told this as an audience. There is no evidence in the rest of the film to suggest that Emma and Steve had been "getting along famously" and there was most certainly no evidence that Charlotte was jealous of them. And then, of course, came the "dramatic twist" at the end where it is revealed that the whole movie was a dream. The idea that Albert was in a mental hospital and was seeing Charlotte as the villain because she was injecting him with needles was, admittedly, a nice idea and probably would have been an interesting twist at the end but was not conveyed correctly resulting in a tacky, even worse ending to the already dreadful story.
Overall the film had no regard for story or character motives, it was shot and performed in a way that made it look tacky and rushed, the editing made it feel slow and awkward and the music was so repetitive and overused. Complete waste of a time and I now realize it was the 1st of April when my friend referred me to this film so was probably a joke.
The film sees a group of friends, or relatives, or something like that (it's not very clear) meet for Christmas dinner. When a series of unexplained and ridiculous murders occur. The film loosely follows the traffic officer, Steve Brewer (Max Fury) as he tries to uncover the "mystery" of who committed the murders. Eventually, after about twenty six minutes of interviews with the cast paired with very awkward acting, we are left to sit through seven minutes of Steve talking to the remaining members of the cast explaining who committed the murders. None of what is explained is even referenced in the movie rendering the first twenty six minutes completely irrelevant. If that wasn't enough, the final scene then reveals the ending that makes everyone drop their heads in disbelief. We find that the whole movie was a dream from the perspective of the old Uncle Albert (Malcolm Drizen). Though I suppose this is a good excuse for the dreadful writing taking place in the first thirty three minutes of the film as dreams don't make sense at all.
The film was directed by George Watkins, founder of GW Studios. Watkins direction was unimaginative, unoriginal and honestly, the entire film looked as though the cast had not been given any direction at all. The job of a director is to supervise and instruct the cast and other members of the crew in a play, film or similar production. Watkins film "Death at Christmas" looks as though he left the cast and crew to do as they pleased with the film and didn't care about the end result.
Daniel Ellis cast the film with a very average to poor cast of nine middle aged actors who had not had any experience in acting at all. This is shown in most of their poor performances in their roles giving very limited facial expression and very neutrally delivered dialogue. Ursular Emjay gave an unconvincing portrayal as Edith Hanson applying middle school level acting techniques such as clasping hand over mouth after witnessing murder, and Ralph Toppin gave an uneven performance as Nigel Montgomery coming across as very awkward and delivering dialogue unrealistically in some situations he was put in. For example, when accused of murder he does not seem at all phased and seems to be reciting lines he has read on a script. Though I must say, Malcolm Drizen gives, by far, the best performance in his role of Uncle Albert. Although some of his lines are written quite poorly, his portrayal of every one of them is believable and I have to say he is the only actor I truly believed could have actually been in the situation he was written into.
The cinematography and production design by George Watkins and Matt Vivian respectively was the best part of this production. The film was shot surprisingly well considering the quality of the rest of the film's aspects and showed some very creative camera work which made for a visually pleasing film. It's a shame that the rest of the film's aspects were not up to this standard. However, there were a few downfalls in the camera placement as sometimes characters heads were cut out of shots.
Editing by George Watkins was a fairly average standard. It was not, by any means, up to scratch, but was not the weakest part of the film. The pacing of the film seemed very slow and there were a lot of pauses between characters dialogue and reactions to certain events. This not only makes the general feel of the scene very awkward for the audience, but also takes the audience straight out of the scene. The scenes seemed to flow fairly well into one another but the scenes themselves could have been a lot smoother.
The film was supposed to be set in a large house, but was quite clearly shot in some form of publicly accessible events building shown by all of the fire exit and no smoking signs, and obvious promotional boards that have been terribly covered with white sheets and clothing pegs. The set was badly chosen by George Watkins and Daniel Ellis. Again, it takes the audience straight out of the film and makes them question yet another asset of this film.
The music by Alexander Myttion was well composed and enhanced the scene the first time I heard it, but after the same piece of music had been played in almost every scene, it became a lot less special very quickly and did not often fit the theme of the scene.
I touched on it a little at the beginning of the review, but the writing by George Watkins was, by far, the worst part of this whole film and the biggest let down of all. The script didn't make sense and seemed to make up it's own rules as it went along and just made up reasons that certain events happened when they did without any evidence or explanation. Like for example, "Me and Emma had been getting along famously, all night, but you couldn't keep your jealousy hidden, of our relationship. So you killed her out of spite." We are just told this as an audience. There is no evidence in the rest of the film to suggest that Emma and Steve had been "getting along famously" and there was most certainly no evidence that Charlotte was jealous of them. And then, of course, came the "dramatic twist" at the end where it is revealed that the whole movie was a dream. The idea that Albert was in a mental hospital and was seeing Charlotte as the villain because she was injecting him with needles was, admittedly, a nice idea and probably would have been an interesting twist at the end but was not conveyed correctly resulting in a tacky, even worse ending to the already dreadful story.
Overall the film had no regard for story or character motives, it was shot and performed in a way that made it look tacky and rushed, the editing made it feel slow and awkward and the music was so repetitive and overused. Complete waste of a time and I now realize it was the 1st of April when my friend referred me to this film so was probably a joke.