Pandemonium Stirs "The Black Waters of Echo's Pond"

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Saturday, 10 April 2010 20:32

Written by Maitland McDonagh / Miss FlickChick

Directed by Gabriel Bologna
Written by Sean Clark, from a story by Bologna and Michael Berenson
Starring: Arcadiy Golubovich, Robert Patrick, Elise Avellan, Electra Avellan, Nick Mennell, Mircea Monroe, Walker Howard, Danielle Harris, M.D. Walton, James Duval, Adama Paladino, Richard Tyson

In 1927, a team of archeologists finds a tomb dedicated to the pagan god Pan. Team leader Niegel (Adama Paladino) lays claim to a pre-Biblical board game entombed inside, which he takes home with him to Beacon's Island, Maine — infuriating Nicholas (Richard Tyson), who underwrote the expedition and who wants what's his. Niegel responds that he's hidden the game where no one will ever find it, and then kills Nicholas and himself.

Eighty years later, nine feckless friends arrive for a weekend of fun on the island, whose only resident is eccentric caretaker Pete (Robert Patrick). Well, make that eight friends — Anton (Arcadiy Golubovich) and his wife Erica (Elise Avellan); Anton’s best friend Josh (Nick Mennell) and his fiancee, Renee (Electra Avellan), Erica’s twin sister; Trent (Walker Howard) and his girlfriend Kathy (Danielle Harris); Rob (M.D. Walton), who got his sweet corporate gig through Trent but subsequently hop-scotched over his  friend; and buxom, blond, B-movie starlet Veronique (Mircea Monroe), whose relentless flirting has sometimes sorely tried the patience of her female friends — and one odd man out Rick (James Duval), whose drinking, drugging and relentlessly irresponsible carousing has alienated half his old friends and left him on thin ice with the rest.

Naturally, they find the ornate, wicked-weird looking game and decide to play — it must be just like Monopoly, they figure, only way cooler looking. Needless to say, the game quickly does what it does, unleashing repressed desires, exposing the fault lines beneath apparently solid relationships and ripping the scabs off unhealed wounds. The result is, well, pandemonium.

Credit where it's due to director Gabriel Bologna — the son of veteran actors Joseph Bologna and Renee Taylor — and screenwriter Sean Clark: The Pan game is a novel touch in an otherwise standard-issue slasher movie. And there's something almost subversive about the casting. Yes, the actors are better looking than the average group of nine friends in their twenties… at least, nine friends in their twenties who aren't in the movie business. But the fact that a third were clearly not born in the US (Golubvich is from Russia, the Avellans from Venezuela) and that where they came from has absolutely no bearing on their characters is, in its own way, as striking as seeing Night of the Living Dead’s Duane Jones in a role that wasn't written for black man. It's a casual acknowledgment that Americans come in many varieties. That they're all equally vulnerable to the Great God Pan's malevolent influence is also a given, though true to the much-mocked cliche, one of the black guys dies first. On the other hand, there's more than one — that, too, could be construed as progress of a sort within genre conventions.

For more by Maitland McDonagh: MissFlickChick.com

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