PREVENGE

Prevenge is a labor of love (Haha! Puns!) from writer/director/actress Alice Lowe, who I swear I’ve seen in other movies but cannot place for the life of me. 

Apparently, she was 8-months pregnant when she decided to shoot a movie in 11-days. This has sent a very confusing message to me: in order to finally do a feature-length picture, I should get inseminated. (Jesus, “inseminate” — what a horrible word). 

Alice plays a very knocked-up woman who has a list of people she wants to knock-off (Haha! More puns!) It seems she’s being Son-of-Sam’d by her unborn child; the kid is manipulating her into seeking out those responsible for its father’s death (I say ‘its’ because I can’t remember if it was a boy or girl, and there wasn’t a scene where Alice starts an apocalyptic fire with fireworks gone awry at a gender-reveal party).


IMDB trivia tells me she wrote the script in 3-and-half days. It would’ve been to her benefit to commit to the entire fourth day instead of (I’m guessing) going to Lamaze class. Not that it’s a terrible movie. It isn’t. It’s just okay. And repetitive. Really, really repetitive. And at a 1 hour and 28 minutes of runtime, that’s a filmmaking sin. 

The first kill is pretty good (she knocks some creepy dude off in his even-creepier pet store). After that, the repetition goes into overdrive with the same three scenes occurring over-and-over again:

– Alice has a private moment. The unborn kid talks to her. Alice sinks further into madness,

– Alice visits her mid-wife who tells her everything is fine and pregnancy is a weird time,

– Alice tricks her victim into a vulnerable position. She kills them with the same knife.

Rinse and Repeat six times. Fold and put away.

It also doesn’t really know what it wants to be. A psychological-thriller like Repulsion? A satire on pregnancy? A horror-comedy? At times there’s an unnerving quality (she imagines herself a Furie from Greek myth), other times there’s a surreal quirkiness (a confused, elderly mother walks in on her killing her douche-bag son), and sometimes it’s just plain silly (she gets in a boxing/knife fight with a victim and talks about the futility of working-out). 

I don’t know, the concept is good but maybe would’ve best served as a short film (45-minutes max). 

But whatever. 

It’s time to figure out where the turkey baster is. If Arnold can get pregnant in Junior, I can too.