GOOD TIDINGS (2016)

 

(Director/co-screenwriter: Stuart W. Bedford. Co-screenwriters: Giavanni Gentile and Stu Jopia.)

 

Review

After three vicious, escaped mental patients descend on a city homeless shelter, the inhabitants of the charity house, including two traumatized war vets, must fight for their lives on Christmas Day.

GOOD is a disappointing film. It has a great premise, its intentions are admirable when it comes to characterization, but its extended length and questionable character choices make it a chore to watch at times. At an hour and fifteen minutes, this would be a good film; at an hour and forty minutes─its running length─it’s a is this over yet? experience.

The filmmakers make an admirable effort to flesh out and establish sympathy for the people within the shelter─from its lead character, Frank Roland (Colin Murtagh), to the rest of the characters, the emotional bonds are well-represented. Even the three killers (billed as Larry, Curly and Moe) are given personalities (shown through their body language, personality tics, hoarse laughter, and noises), making them interesting villains with a clear pecking order. Unfortunately, much of this undercut by repetitive scenes of Plot Convenient Stupidity where characters─established as smart individuals with lifetimes of hard choices─decide not to kill the villains when they easily could.

Despite this, GOOD is not a total time waste. Besides its solid acting, character-based writing, and its dark sense of humor, there’s a consistently grimy feel to the flick, from its shot-through-a-dirty-filter/beige-background tone, grubby-looking characters, mostly solid and rough (if overabundant) fight and kill scenes, and a mostly effective, sparse, and off-beat soundtrack (provided by Jeanmichaelnoir, a.k.a Liam W. Ashcroft who also plays Moe). (Possible) further proof of the filmmaker’s sense of humor: there’s a character named Reggie Bannister (Andrew Oyeneyin); I’m not sure if this is an homage to the real-life Reggie Bannister, who played Reggie in Don Coscarelli’s PHANTASM (1979-2016) pentalogy. But if so, nice!

If you’re a patient viewer, you might not mind GOOD’s bloated running time. Otherwise, despite filmic evidence of the on- and off-screen talent, you might want to pass on this one or imagine a well-edited version of its story in your head.