The City

THE CITY: DIRECTOR'S CUT (2009) is a true indie horror flick. It's written, directed, produced, and edited by James Vogel (who also did the art direction, the set decoration, was the production manager, in charge of the costume and wardrobe department, and served as the location manager and script supervisor). I also bet he would bring in sandwiches to the cast and crew thereby making him the caterer too!! This is Vogel's directorial debut and I must say that I'm impressed. He gives us a well directed film with above average-looking production values. There are some script problems (more on this in a second), but this is a solid film from someone I'll be keeping my eye on for future projects.

The story centers on Scott (Ezra Stead, who also serves as co-writer and does some stunts), a student in film school who is writing his thesis in scriptwriting. He presents his script to his professor who tells him its crap and that he needs more life experience in order to make the script more believable. So Scott hooks up with T.K. (Greg Hernandez; also a co-writer and stuntman in the film), a sociopath who is more than happy to give Scott all the experience he wants in kidnapping, torturing, and killing innocent people. Scott's professor ends up loving the rewritten script and tells him he'll easily be able to sell it. Scott and T.K. end up becoming partners and continue their murderous spree in order to provide Scott with inspiration.

The film, which runs 68 minutes, follows these two around on their crime and murder spree. Besides having above average production values, you'll immediately notice the solid acting here. Greg Hernandez provides the best performance as the sociopath T.K. After a while you forget you're watching a movie; Hernandez is very natural. Stead does at times suffer from a little overacting but overall puts in a solid performance.

My biggest problems with THE CITY, as mentioned above, are with the script. I didn't buy Scott's sudden turn from a shy, introverted writer to suddenly becoming a sociopath who stabs, beats the poop out of, shoots, and then drinks the blood of his victim. It was too large of a character leap. And even at 68 minutes this does drag at points. I attribute this to there being really only the one storyline (there's no subplots or even secondary characters here). What also hurts the film a little is the too-early character development of Scott. Scott undergoes a major character change early on in the film whereas I would have liked to have seen the transformation occur more slowly over the course of the film. All these "negatives" with the film are marginal to the effect of the overall film. Vogel has given us a well directed and well edited first feature.

Make sure you get the newly released DIRECTOR'S CUT and be sure to listen to the commentary tracks ... there's some really great insight and funny observations about the film. I can't wait to see what his next project is!!

Director: James Vogel (& writer) Plot: 3 out of 5 stars Gore: 3 out of 10 skulls Zombie Mayhem: 0 out of 5 brains Reviewed by Scott Shoyer for AnythingHorror.com