Missionary (2013)

We have all seen Mormon missionaries spreading the word in their black pants and white shirt and tie. This movie starts off like a Lifetime thriller but ends up more in the horror genre. The heroine is estranged from her cheating hubby. She sleeps with a younger Mormon missionary who helps her kid with football. Turns out the clean cut innocent looking young man is a maniac who becomes obsessed with her when she decides to go back to her husband.The actress Dawn Olivieri seems a bit expressionless in her acting. The missionary played by Mitch Ryan is quite effective.It doesn't demonize the religion but it shows there can be wackos anywhere - don't let appearances fool you.Worth a watch.

The characters all behave so realistically that I was sucked in and on the edge of my seat. A lot of times things happen in this kind of movie that cause it to lose that realism. That did not happen here.The story of a good mother that is going through a tough time and makes an understandably bad decision because of it. She never lost credibility to me. The kid in the movie is not some super child or genius or crazy person. He behaves like a real kid his age and the villain of the piece was frightening and crazy but not unrealistically tough or invincible. It made this movie uniquely scary.I was in the mood for a thriller. I got it.

Katherine is a struggling mother trying to create a better life for her and her son. She meets Elder Brock, a handsome Mormon missionary with a troubled past and they begin an incendiary love affair.Some might look at this and say it is disrespectful to the Mormon religion and its followers. Those people would be wrong. This is not in any way saying that Mormons are evil, but that a twisted person will use their faith in twisted ways. For me, this was very much in the same spirit as "The Stepfather" with Terry O'Quinn. Stepfathers are not bad, but they can be! The tone was just right, the tension was good. There was some dichotomy between what makes a family for one person versus another. This certainly deserves another watch and I would recommend it to others.

Since he made his writing and directing debut with "Dread", a nasty little adaptation of a Clive Barker piece, five years ago, Anthony DiBlasi has dipped his toes into a number of horror bloodbaths in varying genres."Missionary" seems almost like a response to a dare from a drinking buddy: "Make a low-budget homage to Fatal Attraction and make the stalker a fanatical Mormon elder." And I'll be damned if the guy hasn't pulled it off.I do kind of question the taste of using ANY religion so prominently in such a movie. If you can get by that detail (and maybe DiBlasi chose Mormonism precisely because it would be so uncharacteristic to expect anything like this from an LDS elder), the film is relentless in building a pretty unbearable level of suspense over it's short run time.Credit not only DiBlasi's (as usual) driving pacing and crack storytelling but his cast as well --- they supply the glue that keeps your interest in this shop-worn plot. Dawn Olivieri anchors the film firmly as no-nonsense mom Katherine, who finds herself sucked into an affair with Elder Kevin Brock (an earnestly frightening Mitch Ryan), during a trial separation from husband Ian (Kip Pardue). None of the actors have any false-sounding dialog and the exchanges between Katherine and her son Kelsey (an impressive Connor Christie) ring especially sincere."Missionary" is really pretty astonishing if you think about it. It's proof that you don't really need an original idea to make an absorbing film --- as long as you have a talented cast and writer/director at the helm to both keep you engaged and caring about the action on the screen.