POOR AGNES (2017)

Studio:       Other Animal
Director:    Navin Ramaswaran
Writer:       J. Gordon Ross
Producer:  Anna Jane Edmonds, Ryan Keller
Stars:     Lora Burke, Robert Notman, Will Conlon

Review Score:

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Summary:

An unlikely relationship develops between a serial killer and an investigator on the brink of uncovering her murderous history.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Initially posing as CNN reporter Alan Mulder, private investigator Mike Mercer researches the 2004 disappearance of Peter Macur by interviewing Peter’s former girlfriend Agnes. Agnes turns out to be a serial killer who takes Mike captive.

Over the course of his physically and mentally torturous captivity, Agnes eventually breaks Mike’s mind. Mike becomes Agnes’ brainwashed slave as well as her subservient lover.

Agnes attends a torture survivor support group to learn more about torturer mindsets directly from victims. Agnes also goes on a blind date with Chris Thomas, whom she met online. A detective investigating Mike’s disappearance comes to her house, but Agnes deflects him while Mike willingly remains hidden.

Two months after their first date, Agnes agrees to another date with Chris in which she ends up seducing him. Agnes later captures Chris and forces Mike to paralyze him with an injection. Agnes then forces Mike to become Chris’ caretaker.

Agnes and Mike have a heated confrontation over the trouble that caring for Chris introduced into their dynamic. During their argument, Chris manages to call 911 and recover a shotgun. Chris fires when the couple reenters the room, but only grazes Mike’s face with buckshot. Agnes incapacitates Chris.

With their location compromised, Mike and Agnes go on the run. Another patron recognizes Mike when the couple stops at a gas station. Fearing they will call the cops, Mike uses Agnes’ shotgun to confront the other man, his pregnant wife, and the gas station cashier.

Mike waits for Agnes to take action. When Agnes insists that he handle the situation, Mike instead turns the shotgun on himself. Before he can commit suicide, Agnes struggles over the gun with Mike. The other man knocks Agnes unconscious in the commotion.

During her subsequent police interrogation, Agnes learns that Chris died in the hospital and Mike turned on her after being committed for treatment. However, Agnes escapes police custody and tracks down Mike at his mental facility.

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Review:

“Men murder whores.  Women murder their babies.  What does that make me?” muses the titular serial killer at the start of “Poor Agnes.”  Agnes’ atypical deviant DNA prevents her from fitting inside boxes typically applied to those in her trade.  She’s an attractive young woman driven not by the immediate satisfaction of ending a life or warped internal voices demanding commission of evil deeds.  Agnes is cold, collected, calculating.  Twisted perspectives push her to destroy men’s minds, asserting dominion over other humans as part of a self-serving power play.

While researching the cold case disappearance of Agnes’ long-ago boyfriend, private investigator Mike falls under her sway only to become Agnes’ next captive.  What follows next is a torturous breaking of willpower as Mike becomes Reek to Agnes’ Ramsay Bolton.  With his identity reconstructed, Mike turns into a reprogrammed slave, even subservient lover, as his relationship with Agnes evolves in increasingly complicated ways.

When Agnes recruits another component for her ongoing game, the dynamic with Mike changes further still.  Mike’s fight for freedom unfolds into a war to retain some sense of self against overwhelming influence to fulfill his function for Agnes.  Unfortunately, Mike might be too far down her dark path to avoid becoming the unwitting apprentice Agnes has groomed him to be.

Because of its grounded reality approach to presenting a murderer’s private personality as it exists outside of tabloid headlines, it can be tempting to rebrand this compact drama/thriller as “Agnes: Portrait of a Serial Killer” for “it’s like” simplicity.  However, that invokes an inaccurate impression.

Director Navin Ramaswaran’s indie interplay doesn’t dwell on macabre murderousness to the gritty degree that John McNaughton’s “Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer” does.  Nor does “Poor Agnes” depict disturbing abuse as a psychological horror show in the same detailed manner that “The Poughkeepsie Tapes” (review here) peeks behind the cellar door for a frightening look at a sadistic sociopath breaking a victim into passivity.

Uncomfortable sights are included, but used sparingly.  “Poor Agnes” instead emphasizes the mindsets motivating its master-submissive relationship, as opposed to sensationalistic shocks or skin-crawling tension of that type.

In this regard, “Poor Agnes” is a true “character study.”  Too often that term is misapplied to signal an exploratory acting workshop masquerading as a patient arthouse piece.  Here, “Poor Agnes” genuinely crafts intriguing people and then develops them through actions and dialogue, legitimately putting them under an intensive microscope to dissect who they are and why.

Agnes presents herself as the Sun Tzu of serial killing, dispensing philosophy while dispatching victims and tormenting captives, occasionally addressing the camera directly in braggadocios “House of Cards” style.  Although these Frank Underwood moments break immersion, they are few and far between.  Agnes’ narrative ponderings otherwise land more often than not because Agnes, via writer J. Gordon Ross, actually has something to say about her life, someone else’s death, and the link between the two.

“Poor Agnes” doesn’t become pompously or preposterously overwritten for inflated cinematicism.  Actors don’t overplay their roles into rote stereotypes either.  A mostly measured performance from Lora Burke flirts with sorority girl smugness, yet keeps Agnes effusing destructive confidence that showcases her smartness, seductiveness, and underlying sinister nature.

Robert Notman, who is one blonde surfer wig away from perfecting the best Ryan Hansen cosplay of all time, is a touch too young to make for a believable private investigator.  However, he does make for a believably brainwashed yin to Agnes’ controlling yang.  Ramaswaran centers the two actors in a middle ground where they resist temptations to step hard on landmines of caricature behavior, keeping both personas accessible to the audience no matter what they are engaged in.  “Poor Agnes” works because of what Burke and Notman bring to the material through the control exercised over their characters.

95 minutes usually isn’t long, but “Poor Agnes” feels its length because it is so intimately confined primarily to two people.  Quietly contemplative doesn’t make the most enticing tone for a thriller, yet it is precisely the style “Poor Agnes” asks for.

Due to this, a teeter-totter of interest/disinterest changes position depending on where the movie may be in its hill and valley momentum.  Anyone expecting more horror or action than melodrama and introspection is likely to fall off in short order.  Those who connect to Agnes and Mike on the other hand, may find themselves gripped by the Spartan study of the odd bond between them.

Review Score:  60

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