I really wanted and hoped to like James Riffel's (2004) "Mass of Angels." It actually looks quite good, with fluid camerawork and a lot of cuts (credit cinematographer David Sperling and three editors including Riffel. The somewhat ghostly, somewhat techno music of John Conte is also good.

I have no fault to find with the acting either, though not much range of emotion is demanded from anyone. What is lacking is an interesting story to tell or characters with as much as two dimensions. It seems to me that Riffel, who shares writing "credit" with Anthony DeLuca has spent too much time watching David Lynch movies ("Mulholland Drive: and what I liked least about "Twin Peaks") and "The X-Files." There are also loud echoes of "Rosemary's Baby" with various parties interested in the baby a young woman, Celia Chambers (Emilie Jo Tisdale), is bearing—without ever having had sex, she claims.

Before the pregnancy issues turn up, she witnesses a five-year-old kill being killed by an automobile. Two Native American grave-diggers refuse to bury anyone so young, so the woman digs the grave herself. Does this make any sense? Not to me, so maybe she has hallucinated this, and a pregnancy, and a diabolically sadistic cowboy who tells her she was so hot that flames were shooting out of her vagina, and a sort of abortion in which something other than a fetus is pulled out on a rope. She also dreams of being drenched in blood and believes that her television is speaking to her.

Increasing the dosage of her psychotropic medications in a mental hospital don't work. Electroshock therapy seems to (some of her hallucinations occur during that). She is pronounced cured and the "plot" loops back to the little girl being run down. I didn't particularly care about sorting out what was supposed to be "really" happening (or flashbacks to "real" happenings) and what was suppose to be hallucinations. Both were only reelly happening, no? I had to remind myself of that during the bloody extraction scene, which is what turned me against a movie that until then I had just thought opaque but well-photographed.

Perhaps "Black-Eyed Susan," which arrived with it and the high-on-chutzpah challenge to Stephen Spielberg('s "War of the World" in the made-for-$99 "on Night of the Day of the Dawn of the Son of the Bride of the Return of the Revenge of the Terror of the Attack of the Evil, Mutant, Hellbound, Flesh-Eating, Subhumanoid Living Dead, Part 3" screeners of which some of us have received.


Recommended:
No

Viewing Format: DVD
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age