White Reindeer (2013)

This movie is jast all wrong. It has an ongoing countdown to Christmas day but we don't even get to see what happens on Christmas day! In fact we don't get to see what happens with other important factors in the film. The turning point of the story. The death; has no resolution! They know who done it early on in the movie but at the end of the movie it's said there are no leads! Also the moments that are intended to be shocking or surprising are obvious taking away the excitement from them. And her behavior which I assume is supposed to be the most intriguing part of the movie is quite understandable.This said, the main character's acting is impressive and likable. And after about an hour I was drawn to her and the story. But it just seems so badly thought out. Thrown together without being fully thought out. There are so many pointless parts of the movie. Really. The most pointless to me is the two times we watch her sit on the toilet! really. Yuk. All in all it did intrigue me enough to disappoint me so it's not all bad but I just wish someone had corrected this story before it was released.

What you need to know ahead of any spoilers, you can pretty much surmise the "adult nature" of some scenes from the cover of a Christmas tree made out of lines of cocaine. The plot will still surprise you, but you'll have a warning. Also, do not watch this movie with your in-laws and probably not your parents either. It's an independent movie and while the lead actress is great and the camera is close on her face for what seems like most of the movie; she carries it off. Some scenes start with that awkward pause that happens in low budget movies, like the actors are still waiting for their cue. Sets are sparsely decorated and all shot on location in small homes, etc. The pacing and transition could have been better. It seemed to jump from scene to scene and many scenes suffer from a lack of a second camera angle. If all that puts you off, then don't watch this one. If you are looking for some originality in storytelling do watch. Another strong point is the sense of place. I've lived in Northern Virginia and even Crystal City briefly and the movie captures not just the suburban nature, but the specific Southern, East Coast conservative style of the area.**SPOILERS** The lead character prefers dressing in beige, loves to shop, sells real estate, takes comfort in decorating for the holidays, and it would have been so easy to create a stereotype of a naive and uptight person. The shock value of the sex and drugs would have been even greater, but I think that would have been a much more simplistic movie. Instead we don't think of her wild behavior as a reaction to some repressed urges, but as part of whatever her grief process is. Maybe her actions are hard to understand, but not impossible. Also, I wanted more scenes with the news anchor and her husband. They were out way too soon. Overall, the originality of the lead character and the fact that the emotional focus of the story did not get lost in the craziness of the scenes overcomes its lack of production values.

The obscene and mundane nature of this film will throw some people off, but dark comedies aren't suppose to avoid disturbances, drabness, or oddity. The Director, Zach Clark, manages to convey great emotion in everyday occurrences, sometimes without dialogue, which is quite a feat. He does it in a different type of Christmas movie that is centered around a tragedy, but which has a humorous touch that keeps it entertaining, and that conveys ideas with a real heart. Though Anna Margaret Hollyman isn't well-known, she does a great job anchoring the film as a character who desperately wants it to feel like Christmas despite being overcome with grief. If you enjoy dark humor and don't need a movie to lecture you, or be overly puritanical, I highly recommend White Reindeer. It is a low-budget classic.

***Pre-Review Warning: on the off-chance some well-meaning parent looking to entertain their children around X-Mas will, because of the title, stick this in the DVD and then disappear to go shopping, I feel compelled to point out THIS IS NOT THAT KIND OF MOVIE!! ^^^ (... review begins here...) The key to this film may be -- I am not sure -- the "thank yous" at the very end for the "kickstarters". I have seen a lot of films, perhaps more than I care to admit to, but this is unusual. Therefore (and apologies if I got this wrong) it looks to me like the Director/Writer is trying to make the jump from Editor (ie, employee) to Producer (employer) and, to accomplish this enterprise, has taken to heart the old adage, if you can't get $10,000.00 from one person, then get $1 from 10,000 people (or something similar, do the math yourself). So, bottom line, what exactly do we have here? Best I can figure, writer/director Zach Clark has taken upon himself, without any outside help (CLEARLY without outside help) the momentous task of de-constructing X-Mas. The story is about a young wife in her early thirties who is married to the weatherman for the local station. They have a superficially good marriage, adequate sex, she loves him, he has just got a job in Hawaii and her life is about to change. But unfortunately not in the way she expects. Coming home from X-Mas shopping, she finds hubby mysteriously (and graphically) dead from what looks like a robbery gone wrong, and she spends the rest of the film in a downward spiral of self-discovery (and the aforesaid X-Mas deconstruction) as a superimposed-on-screen "___ DAYS BEFORE X-MAS" timer counts down, perhaps as a teaching aid for those who may otherwise be missing the point. (A category which I suspect may include most of the "kickstarter" team). The rest of the story is taken up with the revelation that hubby had a black stripper-mistress, spending money for the sake of feeling better until there is no more; getting to know the Swingers next door; and the revelation that the wife may be pregnant. (If I got any of this wrong, write me, Tweet me, or just think really strong thoughts and I promise to pick them out of the Ether). The direction is promising, surprisingly, and with a better script and actors, might have actually resulted in a better movie. However since the Director is also the Writer, he will no doubt have to have a long talk with himself about that. The acting - well, er, except for Anna Margaret Hollyman, who comes across as genuinely fresh and interesting (and could in the Real World have carried a film similar to this entirely on her own) the rest of the cast seems to be volunteers or extras or (is this even legal?) extra-volunteers who may possibly have paid or "kickstarted" for the privilege of being in the film. Or so it seems. **Factoid: within 2 hrs of posting this review, 5 people coincidentally flagged it as "not useful," which is more people than there are actual leads in the film. X-Files anyone?**