On paper "Dead and Gone" truly sounded like an entertaining and potentially imaginative new zero-budgeted little horror flick. The basic plot description is original, the remote forestry settings are marvelous (with echoes of "The Evil Dead" and David Lynch's "Twin Peaks") and the trailer clearly indicated a mixture of black comedy, splatter and psychedelic plot twists. Unfortunately, however, the finished product is an utter mess of a film that turned out boring and ridicule instead of inventive and compelling. It's difficult to point out what exactly went wrong here, but debuting writer Harry Shannon and inexperienced director Yossi Sasson obviously lost their grip on the screenplay right from the beginning. The intended effect of 'is all this happening for real or just occurring inside the protagonist's mentally unstable mind' is never reached and Quinten Jones' performance is far too weak for anyone to care about his gradual descent into madness. He depicts a lowlife actor married to a much older wife who's in a permanent state of coma following a plastic surgery gone awry. The wife's family refused to include Jack in the testament, so he saw no other option than to kidnap her body and hide in a secluded mountain cottage. This happens to be the same cottage where an entire family was brutally slain nearly forty years ago and, on top of that, the closest neighbors are either homosexually perverted delivery boys or desperate sex-craving female deputies. As Jack slowly loses his mind, his wife awakes from her coma and mocks him. Eventually he has no other choice than to pull the plug on her, but the mean-spirited shrew keeps coming back in further evolved states of decay. "Dead and Gone" is primarily a very boring film! The story repeatedly follows Jack's irrelevant and pointless daily routines of running through the woods, draw hideous designs on his porch, chop wood and bicker with his chain-smoking dead wife. The cottage's sinister past is hardly even referred to anymore after the opening credits and Jack's interactions with the deranged locals seemingly just serve as time-filling footage. There are so many other interesting aspects that remain unprocessed, like Jack's liaison with the family attorney or the bizarre war traumas of sexy deputy Kate. "Dead and Gone" features nothing even remotely resembling an horrific atmosphere or nightmarish imagery. Usually, low-budgeted independent horror flicks like this have to rely on grainy cinematography and/or deeply perverted insinuations, but this movie looks and feels as it was made by freshly graduated film students who wanted to do everything nicely by the book. The make-up effects are often downright pathetic and evoke laughter instead of frights. If this was meant as homage to the original "The Evil Dead", then Sam Raimi definitely shouldn't feel honored. The acting performances are miserable, with the one notable exception of Felissa Rose as Jack's attorney. Fans of nonsensical Z-grade horror smut will certainly recognize her odd face, as she was the one and only Angela from "Sleepaway Camp" in 1983.
Review of Dead and Gone
