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Total Performance

Cori is slightly distracted while with a client.

We all know the cliches about actors and the sometimes bizarre day jobs they end up working until they finally get a break. I suppose in a way any job that requires you to interact with people counts as practice for an actor, but some day jobs are just designed for actors. For example, the company struggling actress Cori Sweeney (Tory Berner) works for, the titular Total Performance, offers an unusual service for their clients. Don’t worry, it isn’t anything I can’t mention in a family-friendly review.

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The Chair

Murphy and Sullivan have a heart to heart. Sort of.

It’s hard to think of a more terrible and soul-destroying place than a cell on Death Row. Appeals drag on endlessly, yet every second passes by much too quickly. Your fellow inmates are all suffering in the same ways, though this is probably one time when sharing the misery doesn’t help. And waiting patiently beyond a certain door is the bleak room where your life will end. Now multiply all this despair by a factor of at least ten, and you have an idea of the nightmarish world of The Chair.

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Here Lies Joe

Joe contemplates the cemetery and also his car keys.

You have to be careful who you talk to in a support group, especially when you’re new. Just ask the title character in Here Lies Joe (Dean Temple), who’s just started attending a suicide prevention support group. It’s run by Bill (Timothy J. Cox), who means well but seems to be more concerned with what’s appropriate than with anyone’s well-being. To be fair, the overly happy slogans everywhere may have skewed his thinking.

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The Dark Tapes

The camera sees all, but doesn't always let us know what's really out there.

There are four stories tangled together in The Dark Tapes, all done in found footage format and all about things that go bump in the night, but they certainly aren’t four standard ghost stories, not by a long shot. If you want something suspenseful and creepy but otherwise aren’t sure of what genre you’d like, this is the film for you.

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Gene

Lauren seems nice, but you probably wouldn't want her as your mom.

We all know being a single parent is rough. Unfortunately for widowed mother Lauren (Emma Wise), her 12-year-old son Gene (Jack Maw) is a particular handful. Now he’s in trouble at school for having brought in an especially large hunting knife. Granted, the knife is something of a keepsake — it belonged to his recently deceased stepfather — but it’s also a deadly weapon. It’s a difficult matter to handle, but Lauren absolutely agrees with the head teacher (Tracy Gabbitas): this can never happen again.

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The Hollow

Vaughn broods in front of the equally brooding Mississippi landscape.

In Culter County, Mississippi, there’s a little out of the way spot the locals call The Hollow. It used to be just one of those spots where teenagers would park, but these days there are more sinister goings-on there. When a 20-something couple, just passing through town, ask two deputies for a cheap place to crash for a while, Deputy Ray Everett (Miles Doleac) decides to send them to The Hollow, just because he’s a jerk like that.

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Twenty Twenty-Four

Arthur asks Roy what's on his mind for the 300th time.

Eight years from now, the world is on the brink of nuclear war. It’s probably all Donald Trump’s fault. In Twenty Twenty-Four, the British government has created a series of secure bunkers to keep all the important people (referred to collectively as Priority One) alive. Until disaster strikes, though, each bunker has just one occupant, a scientist and general handyperson whose job it is to keep everything in working order. When disaster does strike, these caretakers are supposed to slip quietly out the back while all the rich and powerful arrive at the front door.
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