C.R.Usher – Indie Film Review
Synopsis:
Written, directed, and produced by Richard Groen.
Catherine helps the police locate a drug lord named Scorpion who ends up getting killed during his arrest. Scorpion’s girlfriend, a psychotic syndicate killer, blames Catherine for her man’s death and subjects her to a grief driven terror campaign.
Review Summary:
C.R.Usher is a compelling story that allows the audience to feel the terror of the events. However, some unfocused plot points and weird editing make it a movie that still needs a little work.
The Good:
Compelling Story – This is the best thing about C.R.Usher. After Catherine’s actions leads to Scorpions death, she is suddenly hunted by his psychotic girlfriend. Catherine is your average single mother. This normalcy to her life allows the audience to connect with her feelings of terror in this situation. And you can truly feel it. Everytime she gets a phone call or something happens in her life you are worried that the girlfriend is just around the corner ready to attack.
The Ehh:
Editing – In the beginning it was as if you are watching three different movies. There’s the mother’s story, the drug dealers, and the cops. It takes quite a while for them to intertwine. Now, that’s not the ultimate problem though. The problem is how the scenes change from one to another. Let me give you an example. There is a scene where Scorpion is talking to his girlfriend about his drug runner. After a quick phone call Scorpion then learns what happened to his drug dealer. Now, normally when so much time is dedicated to something like this we would cut to the drug dealer to see what is happening. Well, not in this case. Instead we cut to Catherine and her son. Then after a great deal of seemingly pointless exposition we see the results of the drug dealer. With so many storylines, I can understand the difficulty in editing many of these scenes together, but it could have been tightened up a little.
The Ugh-ly:
Unfocused Story – This basically feeds off my point of the editing. C.R.Usher has way too many storylines. There is Catherine, the divorced single mother with a son, the drug dealer and his girlfriend, and finally a detective and his department who has a past that makes him more connected than we originally thought. But wait… those are just the one’s we open with. Eventually, we learn about Catherine’s deadbeat ex-husband and her son that is suddenly getting in trouble at school. We get to spend time with the detective’s partner as she teaches self-defense. We learn how crazy Scorpion’s girlfriend really is. And the most wasted storyline was learning about the rough relationship between Catherine’s sister and father. Every time a character was introduced, the movie feels it is imperative to give us lengthy exposition about their backstory. While a few of these are fine and even good to creating a good movie, it just went a little too far on most of them.
Verdict:
C.R.Usher definitely has some elements of good storytelling and filmmaking. The editing and storylines just need to be tightened up to allow for a more cohesive experience.
You Can follow both C.R.Usher on facebook and EagleWolf Productions on their website to get more information on how you can see C.R.Usher.
https://vimeo.com/181422423
