GREENLIGHT

Directed by: Graham Denman

Starring: Chase Williamson, Shane Coffey, Danielle Bisutti, Chris Browning, Brian Cousins, Nicole Alexandra Shipley, Caroline Williams, Victor Turpin

Jack is an aspiring film director desperate to break into making feature films after completing a few well-received shorts. However he has hit a catch-22 situation: no one will hire him to make a feature…until he's already made a feature. After a rather humiliating dinner with his girlfriend's parents, Jack is finally thrown a bone by Bob Moseby, a well-known producer working in low budget horror movies. Jack jumps at the chance to make the film, but during production Moseby makes a macabre demand, and suddenly finishing the film is the last thing Jack wants to do.

As a film fan, I am as much fascinated by the making of film as I am with the finished product. There have been a number of good horror films over the past few years which are set in and around movie sets, such as Starry Eyes, Cain Hill and The Final Scream, which do a wonderful job of blending "reality" (as depicted on film) with fantasy and the supernatural. Greenlight is another sterling example of this but without a supernatural element.

When we first meet Jack he's in the middle of a meeting with a studio executive making a pitch for a western. I was reminded of Christopher Guest's The Big Picture, as Jack frantically tries to alter his script to fit. Unfortunately he's shot down (which we knew when he started eating his lunch) and told that the only way he was going to get hired to shoot a feature….was to have already shot a feature. As this film is indeed Graham Denman's first feature as a director, you can only but wonder how often he himself has heard this mantra.

The dinner scene with his girlfriend's parents is pretty excruciating. Jack's girlfriend Chantel has already had a best-selling novel published and her father has a very high opinion of her and a very low one of Jack, and lets him know so in very certain terms. Jack silently takes it until he receives a call from Moseby, setting up a meeting.

The film follows the trials and tribulations of prepping for filming. Jack gets familiar with his cast, which includes Nancy, who happens to be the wife of Moseby, Damien, who is also on his first feature, and Sarah, a young actress he'd met on a previous shoot. Jack also had his good friend Sam working beside him behind the camera.

After a very successful first day, Jack is pulled aside by Moseby who tells him that he wants the final kill in the film - where Damien's character is shot - to be real. He wants Damien to be really killed on film. Naturally Jack is freaked out and refuses to help but Moseby has already taken steps to ensure Jack plays his part.  Suddenly what should be his dream-come-true is a complete nightmare. He does all he can to get out of the situation he finds himself in but ends up getting more and more cornered. Chase Williamson does a great job of taking Jack through different states of being: the desperate wannabe, then the gushing director motivating his cast and crew, and then the slow spiral through paranoia, fear and desperation. Equally good is Chris Browning as Moseby, always the smartest guy in the room and two steps ahead of Jack all the time.

Greenlight is a film which works on just about every level possible and deserves to be talked about alongside Starry Eyes. The film that Jack is shooting is about a group of medical testees who have been given psychotropic drugs and cannot tell what is dream/nightmare or reality and start killing each other as their psychosis and paranoia worsen. Jack similarly feels the world has been pulled from under his feet. There is a  brilliant scene which exemplifies the blurring of what is real and what isn't when Jack finds a video diary of a previous director on the project. The film builds to a tense climax. Will Jack go through with the scene? What are his options at this point?

While there are some obvious moments to the script, the film-making element seems authentic and the anecdotal elements more than likely are drawn from real experiences. The meta elements work really well and I have to admit I was really leaning in during the final scene being shot on a closed set.

THE VERDICT

Special mention must be made for Cinematographer Powell Robinson who has done a superb job of lighting the film, using noir-ish shadow to great effect, especially in Moseby's scenes, while the film’s studio set is bathed in deep primary colours, much like the work of Argento and Bava.

Greenlight is a great little psychological thriller, which had me wondering up to the final scenes how Jack was going to deal with his situation and does a good job of blurring the lines between what happens in front and behind the camera. Definitely check it out.

8 out of 10 RECOMMENDED

MikeOutWest

 greenlight is available to rent or buy from all good streaming media sites