THE GIRL IN THE PHOTOGRAPHS (2015)

Studio:       Vertical Entertainment
Director:    Nick Simon
Writer:       Oz Perkins, Robert Morast, Nick Simon
Producer:  Andrea Chung, Thomas Mahoney
Stars:     Kal Penn, Claudia Lee, Kenny Wormald, Toby Hemingway, Luke Baines, Miranda Rae Mayo, Corey Schmitt, Oliver Seitz, Autumn Kendrick, Christy Carlson Romano, Eva Bourne, Katharine Isabelle, Mitch Pileggi

Review Score:

---

Summary:

Serial killers tormenting a young woman with photos of their crimes attract the attention of a celebrity fashion photographer.

---

Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Rapid City – Janet says goodbye to her friend Britney after they attend a movie together. A red truck with horns on the hood follows Janet home. Wearing masks, serial killers Tom and Gerry abduct Janet and take photographs of her body posed like a catalogue model.

Spearfish – Colleen Haniford arrives for work at Wellburn’s Market and finds a disturbing photograph depicting Janet with her face skinned pinned to the bulletin board. Despite having taken similar photos to the police previously, Sheriff Porter and Deputy Daniels tell Janet there is nothing they can do.

Los Angeles – Celebrity photographer and former Spearfish resident Peter Hemmings reads a blog about the supposed serial killer leaving disturbing photographs around South Dakota. Recognizing that the macabre photos are reproductions of model photos he did for a trendy clothing catalog, Peter resolves to go to Spearfish and stage a faux murder photo shoot of his own as retaliation. Peter brings his girlfriend Rose, assistant Chris, and models Trip and Victoria with him.

Colleen’s boyfriend Ben drops her off at Wellburn’s Market. Colleen works her shift alone. At a different time, Tom and Gerry abduct Colleen’s coworker Jill.

Chris meets Colleen at the market while buying supplies for Peter’s stay in Spearfish. Peter has Chris invite Colleen to their lakeside rental cabin for a party along with other locals. Without realizing the vehicle belongs to the murderers, Peter also has Chris leave a note on Tom’s red truck expressing interest in using it for a photo shoot.

Tom torments Jill by trying to feed her cat food while she is locked in a dog cage in his basement. Tom and Gerry kill Jill and use her phone to text with Colleen when Colleen blows off Ben to go to Peter’s party.

Colleen comes to the cabin and flirts with Chris, but she leaves after Peter refuses to stop taking her picture. When she goes out to her car, Colleen finds another disturbing photograph on the windshield. Sheriff Porter and Detective Daniels come to the scene to take fingerprints and statements, but reiterate that they cannot do anything.

Ben is waiting for Colleen when she comes home. They get into an argument and Colleen kicks Ben out. Tom and Gerry abduct Ben in the hallway.

Peter tells Chris that he wants to take Colleen back to Los Angeles with them to make her a model as well as to take her away from the danger in Spearfish. Colleen ultimately agrees.

Tom comes to the market to buy cat food and has an awkward encounter with Colleen, with whom he is infatuated. Tom goes home to Gerry and the two of them prepare to dismember Ben and bring his body in garbage bags to the cabin.

While Chris, Colleen, Trip, and Victoria stay inside, Peter and Rose go out to the hot tub where they end up murdered. Tom and Gerry infiltrate the cabin and kill the two models next. Chris leaves Colleen alone to investigate and Gerry stabs him through the head after the power is cut.

Colleen comes downstairs to find Tom and Gerry posing the dead bodies. Tom tries assuring Colleen that everything is being arranged for her, but she tries running back upstairs. Tom and Gerry chase and capture her.

A woman arrives alone for her shift at Scoopie’s Ice Cream. Taped to the building’s door she finds a photograph of Colleen appearing frightened and stunned while sitting in the middle of a dead body arrangement on the cabin’s couch.

---

Review:

Caught in a small town rut of nine-to-fiving as a grocery store cashier, Colleen could use a streak of excitement in her uneventful life.  Be careful what you wish for, because that’s precisely what she receives after a sick secret admirer starts leaving Colleen gruesomely graphic photographs featuring his serial killing handiwork.

Until a verifiable crime is committed, the sheriff couldn’t care less.  Someone who isn’t willing to sit on his hands is famed fashion photographer Peter Hemmings.  When Peter realizes his American Apparel-esque catalog spreads are being recreated using macabre models, fingers are snapped and an entourage is assembled.  Peter temporarily trades Hollywood for his hometown as he embarks on a plan to outwit the insidious imposter while Colleen works to avoid becoming a featured centerpiece in the killer’s next picture.

On paper, “The Girl in the Photographs” can sound like an all too typical horror movie.  A cabin in the woods hosts college-age kids partying downstairs and a comely couple breaking in bedsprings upstairs.  Lame local law enforcement is as useless as a rubber crutch.  Conventionally creepy killers with a basement lair taunt victims in cages.  One of their masks makes it look like the murderer just came from the annual Purge.

View fullsize

Those initial appearances can be deceiving.  Accurately articulating the unusual impression the movie leaves is more challenging than it would be if “The Girl in the Photographs” were truly a straightforward slasher.  The movie isn’t at all complicated.  Yet writer/director Nick Simon and his two co-scripters turn knobs and tweak details so that the familiar form feels oddly alien at the same time.  “The Girl in the Photographs” doesn’t linger in a haunting way, but there is uniqueness in its design making it strangely unshakable from the mind.

In a straight slasher, Colleen would be the featured Final Girl and primary protagonist.  Here, she isn’t.  First billed Kal Penn is the focal point.  Still, the script introduces Penn so casually and so late in the first act that the way his presence ultimately overpowers everyone else’s comes unexpectedly.

The irritating ego of Penn’s celebrity photographer persona, a pastiche of art stars like Terry Richardson, is initially insufferable.  Penn plays Peter Hemmings as being so preoccupied with pretentious ennui that Penn himself starts off as seemingly disinterested.  After becoming accustomed to Hemmings’ a-hole attitude, the cocky charm Penn lays underneath peeks through more and more, resulting in a character eventually more comically comforting than off-puttingly obnoxious.  The humor present in the film, which stems almost exclusively from Penn, is delivered so wryly as to not be a laugh out loud distraction.  It can be taken as comedy or as characterization.

Not every character sees that level of development.  Featuring in only two or three brief scenes, Mitch Pileggi’s sheriff and his forgettable deputy are irrelevant enough to be phantoms.  Nick Simon explained in a post-screening Q&A at Screamfest 2015 that the police presence is reduced like this to keep the plotline from turning into a procedural.  Wishing to maintain a different type of narrative is sensible logic, although one can’t help think that the only reason to include the sheriff at all is simply to preempt the question, “why haven’t they gone to the police?”

One of the film’s marquee attractions for genre fans is the return of cinematographer Dean Cundey to his independent horror roots.  Several shots emulate the recognizable style of “Halloween,” e.g. a masked maniac cocking his head at a kill and later wearing a victim’s eyeglasses over his disguise, but that seems more Simon’s doing than Cundey’s.  Working with far less scope than his big studio features like “Back to the Future” and “Jurassic Park,” Cundey’s camerawork stands out mostly for being recognizable as that of an experienced journeyman.  Lighting is striking and streamlined, though no imagery stands out as noticeably iconic.  Cundey is clearly aiming for simplified storytelling.

Those last two sentences double as a suitable summary for the film as a whole.  “The Girl in the Photographs” shouts loud enough to be heard above the slasher movie din while its echo may not reach all the way through the ears.  It scores as high as it does because in spite of employing recognizable elements, they are repurposed with such understated weirdness that the film finds subtle ways to feel fresh.  Factor in its South Dakota setting (how often is that state featured in horror films?), an unlikely mix of actors (Penn and Pileggi), a Wes Craven credit and Dean Cundey’s eye, and there is more than enough mixed into its concoction to turn “The Girl in the Photographs” into a different breed of serial killing slasher.

Review Score:  70

---