Almost Mercy (2015)

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

This is one of those massive wastes of time and space that almost has to be seen to grasp how wretched it is. Almost. Because if you do see it, you wont "almost" be crying for mercy.Right from the opening scenes, I knew this one was in dire straits. Here we have yet another teen film about the "dark" kids, the misfits who cant relate to anything in the world around them, and don't really seem interested in making an effort to do so.But what we mostly have is a convoluted, manic pile of excess that tries much too hard to be cool, to be edgy, even to be unimpressed with itself, because, well, its so ultra hip to be jaded about life by the time you're 15, you know? All life, every aspect of it, it seems.Where it does somewhat succeed in its nonstop over the top is to be profane and offensive toward just about every facet of adult society {we really are all evil - its a plot to destroy the life of every living, breathing teen. We've been outed}. Somewhat. Even here, it isn't really nearly as effective as it craves to be. There's also that predictable path of raging to be original by giving us every high school stereotype these types of films have given us four hundred times before. All in the only manner it knows how: relentless bizarre histrionics.Its a rare day when I will rate anything a 1. Most movies have something to redeem them, somewhere. This unintentional disaster flick gets a 1 only because there isn't a negative 6 given as an option. Totally void of substance? More than you would ever think possible. Not to mention joy, hope, and entertainment. A horror flick only in the aspect that you should scream in horror and run like the wind if anyone attempts to force you to sit through it. Now to try to get those two hours back ...

South Greenwich, Rhode Island was an industrial town, but most of the industry is gone. Emily lives in the nice section of town, but to get home, she must deal with bullies. The good news, for Emily at least, is that Tony, one of the bullies, dies in a horrible incident involving his mother's cheating on her husband, which results in several deaths. And getting back to Emily, you have to wonder how she can live in such a nice house, since her mother mainly lies in bed and drinks or thinks about how to improve her appearance. Later it is revealed that her father isn't around much, so somehow he is paying for everything.Emily narrates the movie, and we soon learn how Emily and Jackson became friends. Jackson moved to town with his family, although I'm not quite clear on why. I thought it was job-related and maybe it was. The important thing is that Jackson is the new weird kid at school. Emily also being a weird kid, she makes friends with Jackson. But we don't see much of their early years. We keep going back and forth from the past to the present, and then we don't see the early years of Emily and Jackson any more, until a flashback. The flashback involves their visit to the grave of Mercy Brown, a girl who went through a horrific experience nearly 100 years earlier and even after her death, her body is defiled. It's not pleasant. This is where the movie's title comes from.What we know in the present, almost from the movie's start, is that there has been a massacre, and the news media are speculating about how such a thing could have happened.We jump forward in time. Emily is a brooding teenager reading Sylvia Plath and "The Road". Jackson is on the football team but is still being treated like an outcast. And he has to come home and help take care of his paralyzed father who is angry with the world and drinks, smokes and does other stuff you'd rather not know about in his wheelchair, and having seizures or whatever you call it. And Jackson's getting quite tired of all of it. The coach is trying to help Emily straighten out her life, but she doesn't seem too interested. Then both Jackson and Emily each have their own terrible experience that changes everything. For Jackson, it means the end of school. For Emily, it means the start of a struggle with drugs and alcohol which leads to an incident in which the principal considers his precious football players more important than Emily.You think you will know what is going to happen. Most likely, you will be wrong.I hope I have established by now that this is not appropriate for family viewing. In fact, it is about as far from appropriate for the whole family as you can get on broadcast TV. I can only describe what I saw, but I have reason to believe I didn't see everything. The sound went out a lot, and when this happened while we saw a character talking, the character's mouth was blurred. This happened a lot with Emily. She had a mouth on her.But that's not the worst thing. You can clean up language. I think some of the violence may have been cleaned up too. Two characters listed in the credits were not shown, or at least I didn't see faces. I could see at least one body. And lots of blood. In another scene there was a curious edit that made it obvious the violence had been cut. Other violence I saw was only implied but it was still quite disturbing. And the aftermath in several scenes was also quite graphic.If I haven't said enough, one couple (the man is married but not to the woman) is into S & M. Why in the world was there not an S in the V- chip rating? We already saw way too much violence and I don't think this counts as violence.Oh, yes, and let's not forget the men who are into child porn. This is only suggested, but we know it's happening. A few scenes had music. One scene had good classical music, though that was kind of depressing even if it was upbeat. A couple of other scenes had pleasant music. Several others had depressing folk music which was at least soft. But throughout most of the movie, "music" was the often loud garbage that people who wear all black enjoy (is that the right word? They hate everything). Okay, now for the positives. There aren't nearly enough of these scenes but Emily and Jackson have a generally pleasant relationship. I like the scenes where they are just being friends. I mentioned the coach trying to help Emily, and that's a good scene too, with a good performance by the actor Kane Hodder. The suspense builds as the movie progresses. You know what's going to happen, or believe you do, and it gets exciting.And if I try to think of what is positive about the movie, Danielle Guldin's superior performance comes to mind. No, there's a lot negative about what she is going through and doing. But she's a pleasure to watch anyway.Do I recommend this movie? If you like seeing villains get what's coming to them in the most graphic way possible, perhaps.

If you are expecting this to be your typical horror film, then turn away because you will be greatly disappointed. Without spoiling anything, this movie is simply a revenge movie. The movie is narrated through the view point of the main character Emily. Starting from her childhood to her adult years telling the story of her and her best friend Jackson.The best way to describe this movie is imagine if director Quentin Tarantino rebooted the movie Clueless and turned it into a revenge movie you get this film. There is a lot of blood in this movie and a lot of narration.Netflix listed this film in their Horror genre, but this movie was far from it. Despite this fact I did enjoy it. If you like movies like Trainspotting, you will probably enjoy this movie.

Almost Mercy was much better than I expected for a lower budget Indy Horror flick. There was your traditional slasher stuff and also with an overlying message that that is very timely. Almost Mercy is not afraid to take on a variety of meaty issues that are all too common for adolescents in this day and age...some of the horror veterans (Bill Moseley and Kane Hodder!!) are nice surprises as well. The lead actress - Danielle Guldin - keeps the beat during the entire movie. I have seen other films form the director Tom DeNucci & Woodhaven and this is a real step up from their previous work as this company matures so does their work. I enjoyed it very much...