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Busty hot women dodging serial killers, now
let’s face it: that’s horror in a basic nutshell. But what’s most
appealing about “Long Distance” is that it’s obviously done on a
shoestring budget, yet at the end, I thought it seemed like a remake of “When a Stranger Calls,”
except actually good. I’d rather watch this again
than see Camilla Bell pretend to be horrified by a man over the phone;
there’s just no beating the swill factor of that terrible remake. “Long
Distance” is a rather weak thriller from the first beat, but then it’s
all rescued by a rather effective surprise ending, but we’ll get to
that. Monica Keena is an awfully underrated actress.
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Granted, she’s really gorgeous,
and makes “Long Distance” much more worth watching; she
manages to convey a sense of sheer terror, and break of
sanity that makes her character a very sympathetic person in
spite of the character Nicole’s unlikable qualities. Keena’s
talents are not limited to playing the blond busty girl,
even though she’s quite good at it, and is remembered mainly
for that frame. |
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In “Long Distance,” she’s this
neurotic woman who lives alone and finds herself at the mercy of
this man making his way to her for reasons the viewer can’t know
just yet. As
every other horror movie, you wonder why the hell this girl is
conversing with a man she’s never met over the phone, and why she
kept him on so long when she first talks to him; but that’s what I
enjoyed this. Who is this man calling her? Is he an ex-boyfriend, a
jilted lover, or someone else entirely? How has he found her? Who is
Nicole really? Suffice it to say where the film lacks,
it makes up for in genuine tension, and a plot that ends up becoming
much more complicated than it seems for the first half. Director
Stern amps the tension and suspense with much more gusto around the
home stretch, and “Long Distance” takes the ambitious leap of faith
with a climax that, while very predictable, was utterly effective.
The delivery makes this worth the viewing, and makes up for its
shortcomings.
I find it’s hard to sympathize with a moron,
which is why in most slashers I feel inclined to root for the masked
maniac to maim someone. Is that wrong? It surely is. Nicole is a
character I unfortunately didn’t care if she died or not, because she’s
a pure idiot. Mainly because she converses with someone who she doesn’t
know, and expresses awfully uncomfortable sentiment towards her.
Audiences will cringe wondering why she engages in conversations with
this killer at the start of the film, and then we continue on with her
inability to do most things right, such as disconnecting her phone, and
reporting him.
The film then limps on with a pretty weak mystery involving her
infatuation with the officer assigned to guard her, and their vapid
dialogue between each other, especially when a criminal psychologist
enters the scene. The attempts at psychoses are flat, especially when
the writer is intent on giving away the surprise ending before we even
enter into the finale. Meanwhile, the editor can never seem how to draw
and alleviate tension providing weak and terribly odd edited sequences.
Take for example the scene in which the killer finally enters her
building, and the officer guarding Nicole storms the halls, guns drawn,
and for some odd reason we cut back to Nicole for a minute who is
sitting drinking coffee and waiting. Why they felt that shot would
increase the tension, I was never sure.
In the end “Long Distance” is admittedly not
a perfect film. The acting is weak, and the dialogue is rambling, but
the surprise ending is very effective with a very good performance by
Keena. It has its chinks and cracks, but it’s a solid affair.
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