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THE RECOVERED
Produce and Directed by Mike Stoklasa and Jay Bauman
Written and Edited by Jay BaumanBeverley Sloan - Tina Krause
Will Sloan - Benjamin Budd
Business Man - Douglas W. Rose
Monty - Riv Tyler
Funeral Director - Chris Wade
Little Beverley - Diana PenglaseThe phone rings and she jumps. The hang-ups have been going on for some time and her husband dismisses them as telemarketers, but they are obviously taking their toll as she wears a leaden expression born of exhaustion and fear. Knowing that no one will be on the other end, she stares at the ringing phone but soon answers it regardless. White noise, then the "click." Dial tone. Is it a stalker? Something supernatural, perhaps? To deal with the paranoia, Beverley Sloan pops pill after pill - she has a purse full of them.
The ring is louder than it should be, erupting from the soundtrack, overpowering the organic-sounding other-worldly score, and piercing my ears like a cherub's arrow through the heart. I'm captivated...smitten...in love, even, simply because I jumped too. In little under 2 minutes, with the smallest of acts, directors Mike Stoklasa and Jay Bauman create an eerie sort of pulse-pounding tension. They also set up their movie perfectly - this is the situation, this is who we follow, and this is how she deals with the situation. There's nothing overly dramatic to pull viewers away from the drama at hand. It's filmmaking at its most economic, and it's most effective.
As Beverley, Tina Krause, displays far more acting chops than she has in past. Usually cast because of her classic beauty and perfect figure, Tina has made her mark with early Seduction Cinema and Factory 2000 productions, very few of which allowed her to craft a performance. She fell into the same dilemma that plagued Erin Brown, aka Misty Mundae, in that people only wanted to work with her because of her breasts. Rarely, a filmmaker like Jason Santo will cast her in a romantic comedy where her warm smile is put to great use.
In THE RECOVERED, Tina rarely smiles. With her eyes highlighted in dark makeup, and her constant frown, she invokes in Beverley a living drama mask. Whatever emotional instability she's hiding behind that mask comes to the forefront when her mother passes suddenly and Beverely must travel across the country to arrange the funeral. The hang-ups follow her, and so does an old, well-dressed Business Man from her past? Is he demonic? Diabolical? Perhaps something less supernatural, but just as predatorial?
We know Beverely's mother passed away suddenly because when Beverley arrives there's a round of solitaire, in mid-play, on the kitchen counter. Stoklasa and Bauman fill their movie with many such small nuances. Some are this obvious, and some are more veiled, such as what occurred between Beverely and her friend Monty on prom night. The embarrassment reveals everything.
Beverley's relationship with her mother was obviously strained. Whatever happened between them caused Beverley to leave home 15 years prior and never return. It's even hinted that the two never even spoke since. In one emotional moment, while pleading with the funeral director to finish the arrangements on his own, Beverley confesses that she can't even remember her mother's favorite color. While in the mother's house, Beverely can't bring herself to sleep in her mother's bed. At this point, it's too foreign.
THE RECOVERED take a trip down the surreal once Beverley stops taking her medicine - she starts to hallucinate. As the hallucinations become more pronounced, Stoklasa and Bauman present them in such a way that even the viewer's perception of reality becomes distorted. They start with visions of the Business Man, and build during a phone call to Beverley's husband, or is it Monty? They seem to peak during the arrival of Will, Beverley's husband, who may not even exist. At one point, we see Beverley climb the stairs to check on her husband. The problem is that her mother's house is a single story ranch home. Eventually, even the validity of the climax is in doubt.
Most of what takes place in THE RECOVERED revolves around the notion of "unfinished business," like Monty's still burning desire for Beverley, or Beverley's relationship with her mother. My first thought was that the stress of the guilt of her absence was causing the hallucinations, but it's something far darker - the unfinished business between her and the Business Man. More precisely, Beverley's inability to put the Business Man behind her.
Stoklasa and Bauman are able to maintain their sense of dread and tension throughout the entire production. THE RECOVERED ends up being the most Lovecraftian non-Lovecraft movie I've ever seen. Yet, despite its classy approach to horror conventions, I'm hard-pressed to label it a horror film, but rather a dark psychological drama the feeds on repression and fear. There are moments that would make any horror fan cringe with glee, such as a torture scene that rivals, in not betters, anything found in the squirm-inducing SAW or HOSTLE franchises. There are moments of unbridled fear, such as a nightmare sequence that finds Beverley trapped in a wooden box. Despite how much she pounds the wood, she's never getting out. During that scene my chest was beating every bit as loudly as Beverley's fists. THE RECOVERED plays on horror conventions to undermine the audience's perceptions, and is similar in approach to the recent Sarah Michelle Gellar vehicle, THE RETURN, but where that movie failed, THE RECOVERED succeeds in spades.
The screener disc contained no features.