In every tale of revenge, there is always a different path that a person carves for him or herself, but the end result seems to be the same once they finish. Stemming from a trauma the daughter of an alcoholic who was at the verge of death, Cassie (portrayed by Alice Eve) is living with focus having been saved some time back by private investigator Mikael Tallini (Antonio Banderas). Fast forward a few years, she is a researcher who is also the active side support to Mikael in some of the crude tasks.
Some time later on, a close murder of Cassie’s friend brings her to her knees. She seeks for answers and does not give up till it is done. With the assistance of Rory (Paul Reid), the local law enforcement officer, and the constant protection of Mikail, their scoop leads them to an occult group based in Ireland. Soon enough, Cassie finds herself in the center of this havoc made by the murderer (Shelley Henning). As they exchange transactions, Cassie gets more frustrated in trying to achieve justice. As she develops herself in the investigation however, she finds herself similar to the murderer; Jamie, and both have the same quest.
Cult Killer. Well, at least the setup works. Director Jon Keeyes does not spend a lot of time yes trying to ship his viewers straight to the core part of the action and to the mentor and the pattern. There are certain nice things and Ireland as a place of violence, crime and a series of historical morphing shady masterminds and companies sprawls across the potential. But, there is only one real early instance in the feature that utilizes the European background, while the rest of the movie is either an interspersing of dullness or flatness with minimal establishing scenes shot or a countryside bar now and then to provide a hint of the setting. Flashbacks concerning the relationships and events involving Cassie and Mikael are brought in the narrative from time to time mostly such that the former gets a meatier dimension, while the latter hardly gets out of the parental image. The music as well as the general sound is unbalanced at some point covering the speech.
At a third of Cult Killer’s running time, average viewers will likely realize that there are never going to be any twists among the characters and everything is ultimately expected, which is indeed quite true. One can argue that getting right into the action is a good thing, but as we see with the long subplot and struggle between Good and Evil with all the answers provided to why Good’s throwing in punches, the longer you sit with this movie, the more dull it feels like. And the awkward conversations are not helping. W T D: Final cut, what is useful to the viewer in this flick? That there is indeed a very fine line between using trauma in order to help the self and help others and allowing it to engulf the person, it all depends on what help (or without it) exists to improve the self.
There is something here, and with enough effort one would come up with something like a B movie cut from its original version. In its current cut, it is however, hard to locate in this package. Banderas is undersold in his character which from his stock charisma only appears a little. Eve is not awful but perhaps is somewhat off at the casting, not doing well the analytical and goal oriented feelings required of a Cassie by her character. I would be interested to see how Ivanov and Henning would have performed the reverses and how the changes in a couple of the characters’ detail would have fitted in the overall picture.
“Dumpuary” is mostly associated with the cinema where the destructive forces of the studio decide to place what some consider “leaving movies” that are not first class in any way. However, Cult Killer is out to show that messes of the kind can afflict the VOD market as well. About the best thing going for this movie is the title, for the most part it does sound cool.
For more like Cult Killer movies visit 123Movies.