By Todd Garbarini
Julian Richards’s Shiver opens at a Cadillac Jack’s diner in Sunland, CA (in reality,
this
location is part
of a movie set that includes an adjacent Pink Motel situated at 9457
San Fernando Road in Sun Valley, CA) amid electrical towers and pylons. A nerdish middle-aged man named Franklin Rood,
played expertly by Aussie John Jarratt whom genre fans will remember from 2005’s
stomach-turning Wolf Creek and its
forthcoming sequel, stumbles nervously to the counter and cannot help but
notice the waitress, Kathy (Nikita Sesco), who is clearly half his age. He fantasizes about having his way with her
and shortly storms out after she quickly declines his offer to take her to a
movie. His adolescent-minded feelings
are shattered, and he doles out a head bashing in the parking lot after she
locks up the diner for the night, leaving her dead.
Twelve years later in Portland, Oregon,
the city is on edge due to a serial killer being on the loose. Wendy Alden (scream
queen Danielle Harris) is pestered by her mother (Valerie Harper) to ask her
boss for a raise since she can no longer help support her daughter. He friend Jeffrey (Shane Applegate) has more
than a platonic interest in her and she doesn’t exactly push him away, either. It would be foolish of her to, considering someone
is out there murdering young women. When
Jeffrey takes the initially reluctant Wendy out to dinner and offers that she
stay with him that night, she attempts to assure him that she will be fine. Any
seasoned horror film fan will know right away that she is about to receive a visit
from lunatic Franklin. When Franklin
arrives in her home and surprises her, he reconsiders killing Wendy as she
begins to behave in a way that he is not used to. She evinces a disposition
that is different from all of the young women he has killed up to this point.
Like most serial killers, Franklin suffered bullying and humiliation during his
childhood and blames others for his failures. But Wendy seems different to him, and through
his own delusional method of thinking, he believes that he can persuade her to
love him. The rest of the film consists
of the police and their failure to adequately protect Wendy (it features two of
the dumbest police officers in recent movie memory, who are both mercifully offed
by Franklin within a minute of each other; Casper Van Diem (from Starship Troopers) is the lead detective
and Rae Dawn Chong appears as his partner, though she is given very little to
do). In the midst of Wendy’s attempts to
escape Franklin’s clutches he hatches a hair-brained scheme to get her to play
house with him.
While I would not consider the film to
be anywhere near as suspenseful as the ads would lead you to believe, it is always
interesting, though were it not for the central performance by Mr. Jarratt as
Franklin, it would have been no different than the recent horror outings such
as Choose (2010) and ATM (2012). Shiver is a step above these films and keeps you focused until the
final frame. There are moments that make
you want to scream and reach through the screen to choke the characters in
frustration over their actions, but for the most part the film succeeds in its
quest to entertain. It does require a
suspension of disbelief to succeed. Mr.
Jarratt has a unique ability to play unrepentant psychopaths. His turn as Mick Taylor in Greg McClean’s
aforementioned Wolf Creek brought to
life one of the most frightening and vicious psychos that the cinema has seen
in quite some time. Here he is also
mean, but for different reasons. In Wolf Creek, he seemed bent on inflicting
pain on others for his own pleasure. Here, his Franklin is a rejected and unhappy soul trying to connect with
someone and goes about it in a terrible and bizarre fashion. Valerie Harper gives a feisty performance as Wendy’s
mother, although she only appears in two scenes. I almost see her as a divorced Karen Hollis
from Blame It on Rio (1984) some 30
years later, nagging her daughter. Danielle
Harris is also quite good and proves a great nemesis for Franklin. The score is by Richard Band, brother of
Charles Band and veteran of over 80 films. At times, the music is oddly reminiscent of Philip Glass’s score to Errol
Morris’s The Thin Blue Line (1989),
but it is effective for the most part. The
location filming in Portland, Oregon is a nice change of pace and showcases Southeast
Milwaukee Avenue, home to Franklin’s day job as a jeweler and the common denominator
between all of his victims that the detectives notice and set them on his trail. The Moreland Theatre several doors down reads
simply Harry Potter, as though they
didn’t receive permission from Warner Brothers to put a full title on it.
The DVD itself is bare-bones and
contains trailers for Aberration and The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh.
I would have liked some interviews and a commentary with Ms. Harris who
is always so fun and bubbly when talking about her career and the onscreen
action. All in all, definitely worth
seeing for Mr. Jarratt and Ms. Harris completists.
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