WHEN HEAVEN COMES DOWN

Produced by Gary M. Lumpp and Tammy Cooper
Written, Directed, and Edited by Gary M. Lumpp

Sam - Emily Albright
The Savior - Joe Gordon
Chad - Jeff Dylan Graham
McGinty - Robert Z'Dar
David Nash - Aaron Reisner

I'm biased towards any release, horror or other wise, that is willing to address societal issues and bring them to the spotlight. The movie doesn't have to be particularly well made , or even be all the good, but the very fact that the movie has a point of view and something to say validates the movie's existence as art. It doesn't even matter whether I agree with what is being said or not, the movie has weight and substance, and I, as a viewer, have just experienced the world through someone else's eyes.

In recent years, horror filmmakers, who used to be some of the most political filmmakers working, forgot this concept. A few people, like Tim Ritter with this TRUTH OR DARE sequels, tried to stay the course, but blood, guts, tits, and ass, replaced thought provoking story content.

Gary M. Lumpps' WHEN HEAVEN COMES DOWN plays like the horror movies of yesterday, back when they were about something. Lump could have made a slasher movie about college sorority girls with some T&A shower scenes in order to beef up the sellability of the title, but he doesn't. Instead Lumpp chooses to set his movie against the back drop of a shelter for battered woman's where the hope for a new future is all the occupants have left.

Considering that women are the traditional victims in slasher films, the use of a shelter could be viewed as some sort of black comedy or dark irony, but Lumpp never plays up any humor. The subject is handled with delicacy and restraint, eventually becoming a metaphor for the treatment of women in horror cinema.

By placing his lead character, Sam, in the shelter, Lumpp gives his her a purpose in life other than to solely exist as prospective slasher fodder. She's a survivor who has been beaten down and must reach deep within her reserves to find the strength to go on. Played by Emily Albright, an actress I'm unfamiliar with, Sam's tough outer core is only paper thin. She wants desperately to shed that armor and be softly intimate with someone again.

Enter The Savior. The serial killer who is the cause of all Sam's anguish. Like so many psychos on this side of the Vatican, The Savior speaks with God. Like Manson or Berkowitz, The Savior believes God is using him as a vessel to prepare the Earth for The Almighty's return. God wants The Savior to sacrifice young women as a form of appreciation.

This is where Lumpp looses me. I can't remember the last time a movie portrayed religion in an uplifting, positive light. Not that Lumpp totally condemns religion, he just uses it like so many others, as an easy excuse for societal woes.*

At least the "voice of God" aspect is grounded in fact through the previously mentioned killers Manson and Berkowitz.

Fortunately Lumpp doesn't dwell on the aspect of religion for very long. He's able to work the events back to abused women in a way I didn't expect, or at least fully expect. The movie moves in full circle in that regard.

Like other movies I've viewed recently, WHEN HEAVEN COMES DOWN is feminist in nature, with few positive male characters. Jeff Dylan Graham and Robert Z'Dar each have supporting roles and as a wife-beater and drunk respectively. The closest thing the movie has to a traditional male hero, a down and out Federal Agent, is washed up and gutless. It's almost as if Lumpp had no traditional male role models when growing up, which might benefit him as a maker of horror films. It gives him the good taste to move away from stereotypes and create strong female characters in a genre where they are desperately needed.

*My personal take, man and his interpretations are fallible, not the institution.

MindsIProductions