Image Courtesy of Clout Communications
Detective Jeff Anderson (Shawn Ashmore) returns home to discover his wife dead in their bathtub. Despite evidence to the contrary he becomes obsessed with proving her death to have been murder. He soon uncovers that the culprits are a father and son duo with a vendetta against successful women. As the net closes in on the pair, Anderson discovers that they may be a few steps ahead of him, and the stakes to capture them rise dramatically.
The cast is made up of plenty of familiar faces, our lead Shawn Ashmore being the most obvious one. He’s one half of the acting Ashmore twins; for those that get confused, Shawn is the one who appeared in Frozen, The Following, and the X-Men films. Here he takes the lead, the audience spending most of the time with his character, Anderson. Ashmore does a great job in the role, taking the viewer on his journey from happy-go-lucky detective to down-and-out desperado. Supporting Ashmore in the role of villains are Gary Cole, known better for his comedic turns in Entourage and Veep, and The 100‘s Richard Harmon. Cole relishes inhabiting his darker side and once more proves that comedians make good psychopaths, and Harmon is clearly also having a lot of fun being openly bad for once. Fans of The 100 will know that his character John Murphy is forever swaying between trying to be good,and giving into his devious urges. In Anderson Falls he lets rip being openly evil and in doing so gives a great chilling performance. Given the popularity of the stars involved, Anderson Falls makes for a very marketable prospect, which is handy as overall the film is sadly a tad on the dull side.
The biggest flaw with Anderson Falls is the way in which the narrative has been structured, strips it of its greatest chance of dramatic tension. We see Jeff’s wife murdered in the opening moments, meeting our perpetrators immediately. We then spend the next hour or so watching Jeff try to convince his colleagues that his wife was murdered and didn’t commit suicide. Given that we the audience are keenly aware of this is just frustrating. Were the film instead to start with Jeff discovering the body, without the audience witnessing the murder, I personally feel that it would have produced a more dynamic narrative. We would want to believe Jeff’s assertion that she was killed, but given the evidence to the contrary we, like his co-workers, would be concerned that he was losing his grasp on reality. There would then be a lot more satisfaction when Jeff is revealed to be correct.
As it stands, Anderson Falls operates as a straight-forward police procedural, but lacks that spark to separate it from the thousand of other films like it in the genre. At times it becomes so generic that a sense of deja-vu falls upon the viewer, tricking you into thinking you’ve already sat through the movie once already. The script also relies heavily on coincidence and leaps of logic, which makes things a little muddled and contrived as events progress.
Despite all this, technically, the film is sound. The visuals are well constructed, the score on point, and the locations take on a life of their own. All this proves that director Julien Seli has a great eye for a shot composition, and knows how to create tension, even with such lacklustre source material. It’s just a shame that his hard work is tainted by an under-cooked script.
Anderson Falls was reviewed at Arrow Video Frightfest Glasgow.
