Title: Offseason
MPAA Rating: Not Yet Rated
Director: Mickey Keating
Starring: Jocelin Donahue, Joe Swanberg, Richard Brake
Runtime: 1 hr 23 mins
What It Is: Marie (Donahue) has received a mysterious letter bringing her to a town she shouldn’t be in. This town is the one her mother warned her about. You see there’s something strange about this town. Once the bridge gets raised the locals get a little…rowdy. Now it’s the offseason. The bridge is about to go up and Marie has discovered her mother’s gravesite has been horribly vandalized. But will she be stuck there for the remainder of the offseason, on the wrong side of the bridge?
What We Think: There are films that rely on atmosphere and then there’s what this film does. It frequently nails its tone however that tone is pretty boring. To say this methodically paces about is a PC way to get to the point that this movie is kinda boring. Quite frankly of the films viewed at SXSW this is the one that held my attention the least. I wanted to turn it off twice maybe three times. Jocelin Donahue is out here trying her best with the script but it just isn’t interesting enough.
Our Grade: D+, There’s really no need to go out of your way to check this one out. It isn’t worth the 83 minutes you’d spend. In fact you’ll probably fall asleep. Either way I cannot recommend this one. It just lacks that certain personality about it. Which is certainly something you need given the script and the layout of the film. It not being there leaves an unfortunate hole in the armor of this particular film. They can’t all be winners at SXSW and this makes that true. Despite the high HIGH quality of film we’ve seen here.