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Title: Resolution (2012)
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| Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
| Peter Cilella | ... | Michael Danube | |
| Vinny Curran | ... | Chris Daniels | |
| Emily Montague | ... | Jennifer Danube | |
| Kurt David Anderson | ... | Billy (as Kurt Anderson) | |
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Skyler Meacham | ... | Micah |
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Josh Higgins | ... | Ted Tellensworth |
| Zahn McClarnon | ... | Charles | |
| Bill Oberst Jr. | ... | Byron | |
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Carmel Benson | ... | Sara |
| Justin Benson | ... | Justin the Level 3 UFO Cult Member | |
| Aaron Moorhead | ... | Level 2.5 UFO Cult Member | |
| David Lawson Jr. | ... | Dave the Level 1 UFO Cult Member (as David Clarke Lawson Jr.) | |
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Glen Roberts | ... | Charles' Friend 1 |
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Bob Low | ... | Charles' Friend 2 |
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Michael Felker | ... | White Trash Kid With Soldering Iron |
Soon-to-be-a-dad Michael makes a last ditch effort to save his longtime but addicted friend Chris from a foreseeable drug related death. Visiting Chris and handcuffing him to an exposed plumbing pipe, Michael forces his buddy into detox, but while watching over his friend he also discovers that all is not right within the territory Chris has drifted into. Situated on Indian Reservation land, the area seems to attract a number of strange people. Someone or some thing has a longtime interest in recording activities in the area, all captured on a variety of recording devices (CDs, film, phonographs, etc.). Michael comes to understand he's been pulled into the latest "story" of an unseen entity, one with a grizzly resolution projected for him and his pal unless they can possibly work out their own agreeable alternate ending. Written by statmanjeff
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Resolution is a multi-layered chiller with hidden depths and a quirky storyline.
The central premise revolves around Michael (Peter Cilella) and wayward but lovable rogue Chris (Vinny Curran). Once best buddies, Chris is now a self-destructive meth addict and Michael has decided to stage an intervention by chaining up Chris and forcing him through cold turkey.
Now, if this were standard Hollywood fare we'd have two drinking buddies with their girlfriends staying at a cabin in the woods. Instead, Resolution sets up a believable situation and one in which the protagonists are forced to stick around.
The chills are subtle. Conversations between Chris and Mike are realistic, at times amusing, but mostly just glimpses into a story to which most of us can relate. The one time golden boy turned drug addict and the path of chaos and disappointment he leaves in his wake. The audience is never shown this path, but the interplay between Chris and Mike and Mike's obvious love for his friend are profound enough to fill in the blanks.
Other reviewers have said this is not a horror. I'd be inclined to agree, despite the hugely unfair comments and low ratings accompanying those other reviews (with which I certainly do not agree). Resolution is strange, creepy and unnerving at points, but never horrific and rarely frightening. It is clever and it will grip you from beginning to end, despite the ambling nature of the script, Chris's mostly sedentary role and Mike's often infuriatingly laid back personality.
Unlike many 'clever' stories, Resolution is in no way self- congratulatory. There's nothing trite about the way the film unfolds and that element of 'hipster cool' so often prevalent in movies that deliberately shirk cookie-cutter modes of filming and storytelling is mercifully absent. This, of course, is dangerous for any film maker as it shirks not only the accepted Hollywood blueprint for 'how to make a movie successful' it is also uncertain about its target audience. Resolution is one of those rare movies: a film that just wants to tell a story. And herein I think is one of the most sublimely subtle sub-texts of the entire thing.
Because ultimately Resolution is an exploration of equilibrium, a film maker's eye-view of how a story unfolds and how bucking the trend might lead to divided opinions. In one of the story's creepier moments one character states that when he looks into a mirror he sees an infinity of moments, all with a beginning, middle and end. The essence of good storytelling is to have equilibrium (beginning), equilibrium broken (middle) and equilibrium restored (end). The resolution of the movie title, I think, is as much a commentary on the way the film is put together as much as it alludes to the recorded material within the film.
It's unfortunate that such neatly realised ideas don't automatically turn film makers into billionaires. If there were any justice in the world, this would be the case. But unfortunately what a modern paying audience wants is thrills and spills, not subtle interplay, dialogue and sub-text. Hence, I imagine, the divided opinion in reviews and the film's poor showing at the box office.
Ultimately I wish audiences were a little more attentive and open to movies like Resolution, but the majority are not and that makes this something of an indulgence on the part of directors/writer team Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead. Are they guilty of being a little too self indulgent? No. I don't think so. Could they have injected a little more life into the story? Yes, possibly. But I don't think the result would necessarily be more satisfying - just different, and more like the kind of thing we are, by now, used to seeing in the found footage genre.
I can't possibly close my review without mentioning the ending which, given the name of the film and the identified sub-text, had to be something special. Well, the jury's out. I probably need to watch the whole thing over and pay more attention this time to what's going on behind the scenes and between the lines, but on the face of it the ending felt like a cheat and that's disappointing.
In any case, I can't wait to see more from Benson and Moorhead and Zach Galiafinakis lookalike Vinny Curran and Greg Kinnear lookalike Peter Cilella (seriously, were those two separated at birth or what?)