Title: Dead Love
Rating: NR
Director: Chris Gallagher
Starring: Victoria Smith, James Hamer-Morton, Emily Booth
Runtime: 1hr 41min

What It Is: When a handsome musician loses his mother to a suicide, a strange woman who works at the funeral home attempts at seducing him.

What We Think: No. It’s not as entertaining as you would presume from that description. From plain cinematography to barely-stylized colors and visuals, to an overbearingly cheap and obnoxious score, the film’s worst sin is its mundanity. Had I not known it was a horror movie as it was advertised, I would have thought it was just attempting at a romantic-drama—which it also fails at. In fact, the majority of the film is patched together by long, slow, repetitive, awkward, and dull “will they or won’t they?” scenes. The writing and acting are stiff and the story forgettable. Another thing—I had to watch the first eightish minutes of the film twice. Why? I was confused as to whether the woman the musician, Allan (Hamer-Morton), had lost was his mother or his wife. Why? Because the woman they cast as his mother was too young and I went on thinking she was the titular “Love” that the story was going to revolve around. They even had shots of her with a little boy, of whom I had just assumed was her and Allan’s kid. Turns out it was a flashback… to Allan’s childhood. This being indicated only by a slightly brighter color palette. Later on (present day) they put a little grey in her hair in a scene (which was difficult to notice due to the lighting) and that made her old, apparently, even though she only looks around ten years Allan’s senior. Other than that particular period of incomprehensibility, this one’s nothing to write home about. Sorry, Gallagher.

Our Grade: F, The actors could sing nice and the ending wasn’t a terrible way to end it; it might have been more effective had it been an otherwise more interesting film. Even if it wasn’t a good film per se—it could still have been fun to watch, it had that potential.