DEATH POOL (2016)

Studio:       MTI Home Video
Director:    Jared Cohn
Writer:       Jared Cohn
Producer:  Gabriel Campisi, Jared Cohn, Demetrius Stear, David Sterling, Randy Wayne
Stars:     Randy Wayne, Demetrius Stear, Sara Malakul Lane, Tom McLaren, Gena Kay, Jordan Preston, Xan Rogers, Ashley Young, Amor Hilton, Jeff Leroy

Review Score:

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Summary:

A man with a traumatic fear of water becomes a notorious serial killer driven to drown attractive women throughout Los Angeles.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

As a boy, Johnny Taylor becomes traumatized when his abusive babysitter Debbie forces him to swim and holds his head underwater. As an adult, Johnny retains a fear of water.

Unemployed and desperate for cash, Johnny takes a gig cleaning pools with his stoner friend Brandon. After a job in Sherman Oaks, Johnny returns to the residence and drowns aspiring actress Casey Coplin in her pool.

Exhilarated by the murder on his drive home, Johnny stops at a swimming school. Johnny poses as a custodian and drowns a woman after her swimming partner leaves.

Landlord Yolanda hassles Johnny for the late rent he owes to stay in her guest room. Johnny drowns Yolanda in her bathtub.

Johnny moves back in with his parents.

Johnny accompanies Brandon to a house party in Van Nuys, where he runs into his ex-girlfriend Scarlet. Although Scarlet claims Johnny once tried to kill her, Johnny proposes reconciliation.

Later in the evening, cops arrive to break up the party. Guests scatter, leaving Johnny alone in the pool with pornstar Melissa. Johnny drowns Melissa.

Brandon finds Johnny afterward to mention the drowning. Johnny confesses to having murdered four women, claiming he is unable to see attractive women and water without wanting to drown them. Brandon agrees to help Johnny lay low while police investigate.

Brandon and Johnny clean a pool for porn producer Goldie during a film shoot. Having achieved celebrity status by being dubbed in the media as “The Valley Drowner,” Brandon encourages Johnny to continue killing to escalate his fame. Brandon helps Johnny lure another pornstar to a pool. Brandon is initially horrified to witness her drowning firsthand. Johnny answers the pornstar’s cellphone when her boyfriend calls and proclaims that the Valley Drowner killed her.

Johnny goes to see Scarlet. Johnny confesses to the crimes before proposing that he and Scarlet run away together. Scarlet tries to fight off Johnny, but he drowns her underneath running water from her kitchen faucet. As Brandon suggested earlier, Johnny leaves a taunting note for police with Scarlet’s body.

On his way to a party at Goldie’s with Brandon, Johnny beats a man in the middle of the road. At the party, Johnny confronts a man jokingly claiming to be the Valley Drowner while he is in a pool with a woman who went down on Johnny in the bathroom earlier. Johnny throws a video monitor into the water to electrocute them both. Johnny then drowns them.

While looking to score weed in an alleyway, Johnny assaults and drowns three youths in a shallow tub. Brandon encourages Johnny throughout the murders.

Johnny is publically identified as the Valley Drowner in the newspaper, forcing him into hiding. Brandon brings Mrs. Taylor to briefly visit her son.

Brandon shows Johnny that he has become so popular, fan groups have formed in support of him as a serial killer. Brandon convinces Johnny to show up at a party in Burbank thrown by fans in his honor. Although most partygoers are pleased by Johnny’s presence, a man named Matt calls the police. Johnny flees when a detective shows up at the scene.

Johnny breaks into a nearby house looking to hide. When the homeowners are alarmed, Johnny is forced to drown the wife in the kitchen sink and the husband in the toilet while their young daughter watches helplessly in horror.

The news reports that Brandon is suspected of being Johnny’s partner in committing the murders. Brandon becomes concerned about the accusation, prompting Johnny to drown him in a metal basin to keep him quiet.

Johnny returns home to say goodbye to his parents. Mr. Taylor pulls a gun on his son. He and Johnny wrestle over the firearm, causing Mr. Taylor to shoot himself.

Johnny hides behind the bed as a detective breaks into the room. Mrs. Taylor tries covering for Johnny by saying her husband committed suicide out of shame. Johnny suddenly charges the detective. The detective fires a shot, killing Mrs. Taylor.

Johnny flees. A fan finds Johnny and offers him a place to hide. Johnny becomes turned off by his fan’s adoration for him and goes back on the run.

The cops continue searching for Johnny the next day. The detective pursues Johnny on foot into the L.A. River. Johnny disappears in the water, and is next seen at a beach incognito.

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Review:

An occasional slap caught on nanny cam notwithstanding, the worst things most babysitters do involve sending a brat to bed early, or providing parents with an unflattering report at the end of an evening.  Young Johnny Taylor’s sitter on the other hand, has a frightening fetish for forcing the boy into the family pool, where she holds his head underwater for sick kicks.

It’s no mystery why Johnny grew into an adult with an intense fear of water.  It is more of a mystery why Johnny is now unable to see a “hot chick” (his words) and water, without wanting to dunk the former into the latter until she drowns.

Taking a job as a pool cleaner with his stoner buddy Brandon is undoubtedly a bad idea.  (Coincidentally, so is watching this movie.)  But being unwilling to go back to acting in “gay for pay” porn, this is the best chance Johnny has to solve his strapped-for-cash problems.

Brandon’s hookup for pools, parties, and pornstars is the perfect recipe for unknowingly setting up Johnny to become the soaked serial killer dubbed “The Valley Drowner.”  Oddly, the more women Johnny murders means more media attention.  Brandon is pleased as punch about his best bud’s newfound celebrity status, never mind how he got it.  With adoring fans and a supportive pal, Johnny’s drive to commit more drownings is now more dangerous than ever.

It’s mildly shocking to see that summary occupying four paragraphs.  Because “Death Pool” involves a premise so thin, most of the movie has next to nothing to do.

Each sequence for the film’s first two-thirds is an extended setup for Johnny to commit a murder in a suspense-less scene.  When Johnny isn’t drowning someone, he is seen randomly doing a few pushups, strolling down a sidewalk, or painstakingly removing every article of clothing prior to balking for a good long while at the water’s edge.  Assorted swimming and party shots also stretch themselves with slow motion to make sure the feature-length mark is hit.

The film’s obsession with being populated by pornstar personalities leads to nudity and sexual situations that are trashy instead of titillating.  Character behavior ranges from being simply unbelievable to laugh out loud ludicrous.

If the movie had any ambition, it might have made something out of its superficial subtext involving the cult of celebrity status surrounding serial killers.  As is, the script doesn’t care enough about its slim story to make much sense of itself.

Dumb details can be small, such as a serendipitous bystander buying a newspaper from a vending box (they still have those?) and reading it right there on the street.  Or they can be bigger about their stupidity, like a detective satisfied with questioning Johnny for a quick minute, despite his clear connection to a crime scene in at least two of the deaths.

Not that it could, but cinematography makes no attempt to hide quick and dirty carelessness.  Night exteriors are grainy from being underexposed.  Shooting style is inconsistent to the point where one and only one conversation cuts between two people speaking directly into the lens.  As if the visuals weren’t weird enough on their own, everything is then washed in a distractingly unnatural tint where green L.A. freeway signs become as blue as the pool water.

Editing is similarly nonchalant about keeping sloppiness quiet.  An errant reaction shot is mistimed with dialogue, leaving one man’s mouth moving while no words are heard.  A quick cut intended to be a flashback actually uses footage from a murder yet to come.  Then there are constant sirens and insert shots of police cars racing or an LAPD chopper in the air, yet just one plainclothes cop is ever seen actually pursuing Johnny on foot.  It stands to reason that the ridiculously abrupt ending was also pulled from jettisoned B-roll that didn’t fit elsewhere.

Even by microbudget DTV standards, “Death Pool” is shabbily produced.  It’s a throwaway thriller probably shot in a week, and written in roughly half that time.  Whatever the audience was meant to get out of it, what they actually receive is a dippy movie that doesn’t try nearly hard enough to have any authentic impact.

Review Score:  25

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