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4.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting low budget/student movie, September 3, 2007
This review is from: Inexchange: Director's Cut (DVD)
Inexchange is an interesting indie movie. It's clearly low budget. From the special features on the DVD, I gather that it was started as a student movie from the film department at Ball State University in Indiana and completed after the principles had graduated. So, perhaps not quite a student movie, but not far removed.
That said, for what it is, it is extremely well done. There is some obvious talent in the writing, directing, and acting.
It's a bit of a character study of the protagonist, who is a shy, introverted student at a university (go figure!), who is trying to fit in, who wants to meet girls (one girl in particular becomes his interest). Our hero is tormented by others at the university, frat types, sorority types, and so forth.
He is tricked into thinking that these "friends" are bringing him into their circle, inviting him to parties, and so forth, until they suddenly turn on him and make him the focus of ridicule in front of others at the campus. His love interest, a very pretty college student, comes to his rescue (lucky him!) and befriends him.
As our hero endures this ridicule by his peers, a dark figure becomes present on campus and begins to unleash some unspeakable horrors on the students who (coincidentally?) had tormented our hero.
Who is the dark figure? Why is the dark figure attacking these students in these horrific ways? Therein lies some of the interesting parts of the movie as the plot unwinds.
I was riveted through the whole movie. The story is intense, the portrayal of the lead character is intense, and even though the movie has a low budget video quality to the filming (which is why I gave it four instead of five stars), the visual imagery of the movie also comes through quite intensely.
It's a fine example of a low budget indie film. It's worth seeing!
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3.0 out of 5 stars
Amateur, but fun., March 16, 2010
This review is from: Inexchange: Director's Cut (DVD)
Inexchange (Zack Parker, 2006)
Zack Parker's first feature film, Inexchange, is billed as a horror movie, and that is to its detriment; it's more a coming-of-age drama, though I grant you that our protagonist, Maury (Sean Blodgett, who's been a guest-cast type on a number of well-known TV shows), has a coming of age of the very nasty variety. The inevitable comparisons to Carrie are not unwarranted, though once again this lends an air of the supernatural to the film that it shouldn't.
Maury is a college freshman. To put it bluntly, he's a dork. His jock roommate Jay (Todd Richard Lewis) seems to like the kid, though, despite his idiot friends Kily (Adam Lash) and Dan (Bradley J. Gunter) taking every opportunity they can to bully Maury. Eventually, Jay convinces Maury to come to a party, and we get much more of an idea of where Jay is going with his friendship. Every cloud has a silver lining, however, and after the party, Maury finds a hesitant friendship with Lara (Tiffany Wilson), Jay's ex. There's a catch, though; Maury has a friend (Andrew W. Burt, credited only as "The Figure") who's not nearly as meek as Maury is, and the guys at the party have fallen under his scrutiny...
Yes, it's predictable; you'll know exactly what the big twist at the end is the moment you see The Figure for the first time. In fact, there are very few ways this movie pushes the envelope of convention, so you can't really look at it as anything particularly new. Looked at in the greater pantheon of no-budget flicks, though, it's not all that bad; a few of the actors are pretty good at what they do (Blodgett's chops should come as no surprise, as he still has a career in front of the camera, but Lewis and Wilson also give credible performances), the script is good if unpolished, and Parker knows what he's doing behind the camera. He does it crudely, in some cases (the climax of the party sequence could have been made far more uncomfortable than it is, for example), but he does it well. Don't be expecting something groundbreaking, but it's worth a rental. ** ½
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