Branded (2006) — Triskaidekafiles

BRANDED

WRITER: Gigi Phillips

DIRECTOR: Darla Enlow

STARRING: Trey Fillmore as Mitch

Dana Pike as Meagan

Jamie Sworski as Crash

George Allen as Detective

Dru Callis as Hawk

Matt McHan as Scott

Megan Enlow as Young Meagan

QUICK CUT: A band heads to a beach house to put the finishing touches on their sophomore album, and end up being welcomed into the lakefront community.

THE MORGUE

Mitch - The lead singer of Carnal Fear, who has a troubled past. For a metalhead, he seems nice enough, and is more interested in changing his image at this stage in his career.

Crash - Carnal Fear’s drummer, and he’s pretty much every bad boy of rock cliche. He is Tommy Lee made manifest. A girl in every port, and willing to find more, and with a nasty drug habit. The best there is, and he knows it, and he’ll make sure you do too.

Scott - The lead guitarist, a real musician, and is kinda done with the band’s bullshit.

Hawk - Mitch’s closest friend, known him since they were kids in a group home, and the band’s songwriter.

Meagan - The band’s manager, a real hard ass, and will put her foot down to keep this ship sailing right. She can even manage to keep Crash in line.

TRISK ANALYSIS: Welcome back, Triskelions! Kicking off the summer with a film that...I honestly don't remember how I found it. I probably was looking at another movie, and it was there as "People also bought" and it looked trashy enough, and cheap enough, to say sure. It feels like I haven't done something truly obscure and indie in awhile (When in reality, Dead and Rotting counts for the sort of level of film I'm thinking of) so I decied to give Branded a go.

The movie opens up on a crowd chanting outside a house, saying "Carnal Fear, never to fear!" which is a remarkably shitty rhyme. A bit of text informs us this is "Day 6" as the lead singer of Carnal Fear is being led by the police into a car, and he sees a little girl. She tells him, "Fly away, Mitch". Which causes him to see a bunch of horrific imagery, and just mutters "Rusty water".

And look, yes, to this movie's credit, the context will be explained in the full course of time, but the answers are...woefully unsatisfying, patently obvious, and this all feels like trying so very hard.

The movie then jumps back to "Day 1" as Mitch drives through the credits, to arrive at the beach house where he and his band mates in Carnal Fear plan to work hard at finishing their next contractual obligation.

He hears a noise, grabs a nearby statuette, and before he can brain the intruder, he meets a neighbour, Sergeant Larry. Dude lost his dog and has been looking for it, and they bond over the statue, giving way too much detail and significance for a tiny little plot device.

“Must be worth some bucks!” My dude, I can see the label pasted to the bottom.

Speaking of trying too hard, that's when drummer Crash arrives, and they make some painfully awkward jokes to try and be clever.

And it's not long before Crash's favourite fuckbuddy Kat shows up, to do exactly what I just called her implies they're going to do.

Those two head out to the barn for their fun and games, and after he ties her up to a very convenient frame, she mentions his son, which angers Crash. So he leaves her there and heads off. This is the only time Crash’s son is ever mentioned, so that’s some backstory we never know.

So glad PC Principal cleaned up after his time in a rock band, and got a nice job in South Park.

Once Crash has wandered off, some reject from a Giallo comes along, scoops up some of the heroin he left behind, uses the hot spoon to brand Kat, and ends up killing her and leaving her there. Oh, and records her tortured screams before finishing the job.

Crash finds her body later, and rather than, y'know, tell anyone about it, he takes her corpse to the boat house and dumps her in the lake.

The rest of the band arrives, and proceeds to sit around and talk about stuff for awhile. At least we do learn about Mitch's time in the foster home with Hawk, and how he has a history of blackouts and hallucinations.

Those are some very sad looking sandwiches.

While Mitch sleeps, we get treated to some random images of randomness, and someone REALLY wanted to make The Ring, based on this imagery. It’s fair to assume this imagery is just being weird for weirdness’ sake.

Day 2 begins, and the band is not getting along. Largely because of Crash being a major ass. The other three seem to get along fine.

Crash storms off like the giant manchild he is, and grabs the boat keys, then heads into town. He's looking for some chicks, and he is not disappointed.

He’s like the child of Shaggy and Fred. I shall call him Shed.

He also meets the local detective, Cooper Griffin, who is a big fan of Carnal Fear. Shed plays nice with the cop, and even offers him to come hang out for a bit. Nice way to grease the wheels.

Shed and the girls he found hang out at the beach for awhile, Rachel is kinda annoyed by his antics and wants to leave. Liz however says don't worry, he won't let anything happen to them...AS HE STARTS SHOOTING HEROIN.

Rachel has a bad reaction to the heroin, and while the girls try and get their feet back under them, Shed takes the fuck off. Once he's gone, our Giallo Wannabe somehow manages to grab both girls.

The killer makes quick work of Liz in the same way as Kat, and saves Rachel for later. Need to spread these deaths out over 80 minutes, doncha know.

Day 3 comes, and the band pads the movie out by actually working on the new album. At least, so we're lead to believe. Not that we see any of it.

And it is instantly Day 4 as we montage through lots of playing instruments to just get past Day 3. I feel like they locked themselves into a six day timeframe, and didn’t have any way to fill out all the timetable.

Coop shows up to meet the band as they planned, and gets into a race with Mitch, as they wait for everyone else to wake up.

You’re supposed to run FROM the cops, not WITH them!

While they're running, Coop sees the floating corpse of Kat, and rushes to grab her. Mitch sees dead body, and runs away. Minor plot point that Mitch does not like water. His running away though makes the cop let out THE MOST HILARIOUS scream of "MIIIITCH" that echoes into the next scene.

So once Coop starts questioning, Mitch calls their manager Meagan to sort things out. He literally says to her, the cop thinks I know her, and uh, BECAUSE YOU DO!

Meagan assures him she'll be out on the next flight, and for Mitch to come pick her up as quietly as possible.

Oh my god, the Masked Magician is the real killer!!

Sarge shows up to ask about what's going on, and everyone is just acting SO WEIRD. Why is this plot even here? What is this movie even ABOUT?? I mean, I KNOW what the movie's about, but everyone is just acting just the wrong side of reality.

My only explanation is to have all these quirky characters acting so over the top so you don't know who the killer is, I guess. If everyone is acting loud and irrational, the subject could be anyone.

But the time has finally come to brand Rachel and fill her with heroin. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Meagan arrives, takes charge, and takes no shit from any of the band members. Especially Crash. Her plan is basically lay low, shut up, and finish the album.

We also get a bit of background about how Meagan is responsible for finding them all and bringing the band together. Her speech is pretty good, honestly. She does the take charge thing very well.

Day 5 dawns, the band is doing band stuff as we spin our wheels, and Sarge somehow stumbles upon Liz's corpse and Rachel still somehow kicking it. But not for long, as the Masked Magician slaughters them both.

And then the cop shows up for no particular reason, and discovers all the dead bodies. Well, that's one way to just have shit randomly happen.

Crash makes a scene to get some attention, and makes a statement to the press about this possibly being the result of a disturbed fan. I dunno, I did always like their cover of Sounds of Silence. Not enough to murder anyone though.

In the middle of the night, Meagan wakes Scott up because she can't sleep and has to get something off her chest. Or so she claims, as she pours him some wine and drugs it.

Day 6 comes back around, and as a crowd gathers outside, Shed finds Scott's dead body in the bathtub.

When Mitch sees the corpse, it causes him to have a ridiculously extended flashback as repressed memories come flooding back.

He remembers his real father, being abusive, until one day when their mom commits suicide, and his older sister saved him and ran away with him. At least, until she abandons him in the woods to fend for himself, and oh, she says mommy didn't bleed out in the tub, that was just "rusty water".

Oh yeah, his older sister's name is Meagan. Yes, that Meagan. She's always watched over him, and once she became a record producer, helped him find work. And is even now trying to protect him. And yes, she's always known this.

The cops show up and arrest Mitch, leading him out of the house and into the start of the movie. The opening scenes play out again and we cut to three months later.

Meagan voices over how Mitch wanted out, she couldn't let that happen, so...committed murders and framed him for them, I guess? Which also begs the question, how could she commit murders before she flew out there? I presume she wa already there, and just walked out of the airport for Mitch's sake, but that's one of those plot points you really ought to explain.

But before she can get too comfortable with her newfound fame and power (???) Crash shows up to enact his revenge for ruining the band, or on Mitch's behalf, or who knows.

And you would've gotten away with it too, if not for this cracked out of his mind drummer.

And the movie has the balls to end over some text explaining that Coop helped clear Mitch's name, and he was released from jail nine months after Meagan's overdose. Way to breeze through the plot.

TRISK ASSESSMENT

Video: It looks all right. A bit soft, a bit grey, very basic.

Audio: Normally with movies that feature musicians, it sounds pretty decent, or at least has some good tunes, and this is very average.

Body Count: An okay little body count.

1 - 13 minutes in and the blonde gets ODed

2 - Liz gets sliced up.

3 - Soldier dude pokes his nose where it's not wanted

4 - Rachel also gets slashed up at some point.

5 - Meghan kills Scott

6 - Crash gives Meg an overdose.

Best Corpse: None of them really do much for me, but at least Meagan’s death has some weight to it.

Blood Type - D: A little bit of blood, some cheap attempts to show burn scars from heated spoons.

Sex Appeal: Nothing that’s very noteworthy. Underwear is as risque as the movie gets.

Drink Up! Every time the movie tells you what day it is.

Movie Review: I gotta say, and this might surprise you, for this level of small budget indie movie, it’s not that bad. I think the basic story is pretty good. Where it falls apart though is that there are some big chunks they could have expanded upon, backstory we don’t see, justifications poorly thought out. It’s a good start, but it needed more to really beef it up. It is narratively lacking to give weight to what we’re watching. The acting is decent enough, especially from Mitch, Meagan, and Crash. The plot could have used a bit more logic, but overall it’s not TOO bad, it just is very rough, and needed a lot more work. Two out of five heroin spoons.

Entertainment Value: Let’s be honest; Crash is the highlight here. He’s entertaining, he’s ever bad boy band member cliche, he’s got some bad jokes, but he definitely drives some of the plot and deflates a lot of egos along he way. The kills are uninspiring. The story is trying too hard to be weird, when it could have worked on a story. It’s not so much bad or not entertaining, but it’s just not good enough in any way. Everyone is just sort of annoying. Two out of five bread sandwiches.