In 1892, Lizzie Borden came across the axe-murdered bodies of her parents.
The only suspect is Lizzie herself.
For the third time in as many reviews, I've used the "Not Horror" tag; I feel kind of wired doing that on a horror-movie review blog, but the movies do centre around horror tropes; Harold's Going Stiff had "zombies", Ghostbusters is about... well... ghosts, and this one has axe murderer.
In the case of this movie though, I really came close to stopping the DVD and picking another film, not because it's terrible (although spoiler; it isn't great) but because it's for the most part a courtroom drama, with a smattering of police-procedural drama.
A period drama with a modern sensibility (and soundtrack) I really feel that somewhere buried deep inside this one is a great Lizzie Borden movie; if it had been just a little more knowing, and handled its own version of events in a more entertaining fashion (here the presumed truth about the killings is revealed basically as an infodump) it could have been a darkly funny, and captivating, movie.
Instead, it screams "TV movie" (which is forgotten it was until watching it forced me to remember) as loudly as anything I've ever seen.
It's crushingly average, and utterly lacking in any kind of charm or whimsy, and it's all the more frustrating for the fact that you can see the charm and whimsey they aiming for, and it is just out of reach.
Disclaimer:
If you look through the archives, you'll see that I've been using "Bought from Poundland" as a tag since at least 2011.
At the end of October 2013 I decided that all of my 2014 movies would be purchased from Poundland, and began buying up horror movies, to ensure I would have enough come October 2014.
In March 2014 I took a part time job at Poundland.
In accordance with the companies social media policy, in September 2014 I contacted Poundland's social media team to check that I would be okay to carry on with my plan to use the "bought from Poundland" tag.
I have been given the go-ahead on condition that I make the following clear:
All the reviews on this blog are entirely the opinion of Will Tingle, the reviews are not endorsed by Poundland in any way and (as should be obvious from some of the more scathing ones) are certainly not reviews I have been paid to write.
In short: The views expressed in this blog are mine alone, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Poundland or it's owners, shareholders, or management.
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