CREEDMORIA

CREEDMORIA

MAY 15, 2018 -- Alicia Slimmer's first effort at a feature length film shows promise but comes up woefully short as a look back at what seems to be life in early '80s Queens New York. It is a coming of age film that makes a solid editorial about society then, but then fills the cast with cartoon characters.

The story revolves around Candy Cahill (Stef Dawson) who is 17-years old with a young gay brother Sean (Ryan Weldon), an older alcoholic brother Danny (James Kelley), an older nurse sister Marie (Giuliana Carullo) a crazed mother Angela (Rachel DeBenedet) and a down to earth mechanic father (Ray Abruzzo) - together (along with a disgruntled pooch named Cuddles) form a very dysfunctional family.

The title refers to the local mental institution in the area that allows some patients to take daytime walks to the local burger barn. The Patients are the butt of the neighborhoods jokes. Soon after the dad suddenly dies, things become helter-skelter as Danny starts drinking more, Angela rejects him as her son more while also carrying on with a neighbor, Sean is concerned about coming out as a homosexual and Candy gets involved with a possessive hoodrat named Billy who wants to dominate her life and cause trouble.

That pretty much sums up the story as Slimmer limits the story to scenes of the family tracking down Danny while he's drunk, Candy making out with Billy while also protecting Sean from school toughs, and mom chronically in turmoil over her family and her affair. The only normal member is Marie who is only in a couple of scenes. The cantankerous pooch spends most of the scenes biting everyone.

The two biggest problems the film has is 1) the amateurish acting and 2) the lack of continuity. The forced New Yawk accents sounded more out the 50's than the 80's and there were far too many scenes when present day cars, buses, etc slipped in.

The story itself, also written by Slimmer has a decent enough tone with a spotlight on how things were in the very early '80s, but the execution falls short. It must be noted that Slimmer was working with a micro-budget of about $150,000.

Stef Dawson is trying to broaden her portfolio since her appearances in "The Hunger Games" films as Annie Cresta. The rest of the talent is just happy to work...and it shows.

"Creedmoria" makes a well-meaning effort to relate what it was like to come of age in '70s New York, however suffers greatly from continuity and acting - most of the characters come-off as caricatures. [VOD] -- GRADE C -- GEOFF BURTON

GEOFF BURTON