REVIEW: VELVICIDE

VELVICIDE, directed by Kenneth Perkins, is a difficult film to categorize. It's kind of a thriller, kind of a drama, kind of a mystery, kind of a psychological horror film. It's a movie that refuses to be pinned down to one certain thing, and that's a pretty neat trick.

It opens in a suicide prevention call center where Callum (Jon Devlin) is having a rough go of it with a very disturbed caller. When that ends, his very next caller is Velvet (Gea Rose Henry) in a bit of distress herself, but then we shift to Velvet being interviewed for a documentary where we find out that she has survived some kind of traumatic experience.

The director of the doc is Isaac (JD Starnes) who seems like he has an agenda beyond mere filmmaking. Maybe. It's hard to say, as VELVICIDE is as I said, a tough film to pin down.

The film takes on the nature of truth, perception, and justice in a way that's not easy to explain. Velvet is in turns off-puttingly overconfident, and then in the next moment incredibly vulnerable, all of which is masterfully played by Gea Rose Henry. The story is told out of sequence and in such a manner that things unravel and reveal themselves in ways that you might not expect. It's really tough to say much without giving things away.

This is a solid piece of filmmaking from a production, cinematography, and acting standpoint, and for a first time feature length effort, very impressively done.

VELVICIDE will probably leave you with a lot of questions, but not in a bad way, but rather in a way that makes you really think about the nature of morality and the nature of good and evil. Either way, I thought that it was a damn fine film.