THE RUSSIAN BRIDE (2018)

Studio:       VMI Worldwide
Director:    Michael S. Ojeda
Writer:       Michael S. Ojeda
Producer:  Jeff Miller, Philip J. Day, Stephen Gregory Curtis, Kimberley T. Zulkowski, Oksana Orlan
Stars:     Corbin Bernsen, Oksana Orlan, Kristina Pimenova, Lisa Goodman, Michael Robert Brandon, Alison Korman, Keenan Johnston, Gregory O’Gallagher, Yefim Somin

Review Score:

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Summary:

Desperate to give her daughter a better life, a mail-order bride marries a reclusive doctor hiding dangerous ulterior motives.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Desperate to escape her abusive ex Anatoli and life of poverty in Livny, Nina joins an online service that matches Russian women with American men. Nina enters into a long-distance relationship with wealthy, retired plastic surgeon Karl Frederick. Over her mother and sister’s concerns, and despite having never met in person, Nina decides to marry Frederick with the hope of giving her young daughter Dasha a better life.

Nina and Dasha are overwhelmed at the luxury upon moving into Karl’s secluded mansion in America. Karl introduces his mute groundskeeper Hagen and housekeeper Maria.

After settling in, Dasha finds a photograph of a little boy. Karl explains that he had a young son named Tyler with his first wife Lucia, but the boy died from a hereditary illness.

Nina and Karl get married on estate grounds. At the reception, Nina meets Karl’s various medical community friends and family members, including Karl’s aspiring surgeon nephew Keller.

Karl becomes uncomfortable when Nina’s uncle Yuri, who lives nearby, mentions Karl’s clinic being shut down after a patient died. Suspicious of Karl, Yuri implies that he will visit his niece regularly before leaving the reception.

Hagen later uses his truck to drive Yuri off the road. Hagen douses Yuri in gasoline and sets him on fire.

Nina’s concerns about her new husband grow when she discovers Karl abuses cocaine. Nina helps Maria repair a chain winch that holds a heavy chandelier in the foyer.

Maria secretly drugs Dasha’s tea. While Dasha stays inside with a fever, Nina goes horseback riding with Karl.

The house suffers one of its frequent power outages, during which Dasha seemingly encounters the ghost of Karl’s first wife Lucia. Dasha wanders outside in a daze.

Having secretly sabotaged her saddle, Karl causes Nina to suffer a violent fall while riding her horse. Karl prepares to club Nina to death with a rock when he sees Dasha, still entranced from the drugs, fall into a freezing pond. Karl rescues Dasha.

Dasha tells Nina that the ghost warned Karl would kill them if they did not leave. A sheriff’s deputy comes to the house to report Yuri’s death.

After discovering the cut saddle strap as well as the word “run” written in condensation on a window, Nina confronts Hagen about what is really going on in the house. However, Hagen refuses to reveal any information.

Dasha befriends Hagen when she inquires about Tyler and asks Hagen to pull her sled through the snow. Dasha and Hagen watch “Frankenstein” together.

Over dinner, Nina confronts Karl regarding her growing suspicions about him having ulterior motives. Karl knocks Nina unconscious when she threatens to leave with Dasha.

Dasha futilely begs for Karl to release her captive mother. Karl cries while watching home movies of his son Tyler.

Nina recovers to find herself stripped, bloody, and locked in a cold pantry. As the only available clothing, Nina dons Lucia’s old wedding dress. Behind a concealed hole in a wall, Nina finds Lucia’s skeleton. Nina follows the secret passage back into the main house.

Nina retrieves a shotgun and confronts Karl about his dead wife. Karl confesses that he killed Lucia because she carried the disease that afflicted their beloved son. Karl recovers the gun and shoots off multiple fingers on both of Nina’s hands.

Nina wakes weeks later to find herself in a wheelchair with an IV drip. Karl and Maria escort Nina to a room where Dasha lies unconscious on an operating table. Karl reveals his son Tyler lying on a neighboring table. Karl explains that his son requires stem cell, lung, and heart transplants, and he has planned all along to use Dasha as the donor.

Maria takes Nina back to her room and drugs her. Maria expresses her jealousy over Karl taking Nina to be his heir.

Having developed an affinity for the girl, Hagen rescues Dasha. Hagen tries driving Dasha off the grounds, but Dasha refuses to leave without her mother. Karl executes Hagen with his shotgun.

Karl’s team of medical professional relatives and other sympathetic surgeons arrives at the mansion to perform Tyler’s operation. Surgery begins.

Although drugged, Nina manages to crawl to a phone to dial 911 before collapsing. Lucia’s ghost appears to knock over Karl’s cocaine stash. Nina snorts the cocaine to suddenly regain strength. Nina goes on a violently bloody rampage throughout the mansion, killing several doctors and also Maria.

Nina has a final faceoff with Karl, the last man standing, in the foyer. Having been released by Lucia’s ghost, Dasha interrupts to confront Karl at gunpoint. Karl moves to wrestle the weapon from Dasha. Nina uses the opportunity to release the chandelier winch. The chandelier falls and impales Karl. Nina and Dasha embrace.

Having been running since the last power failure, the backup generator finally dies, causing Tyler’s life support system to turn off as Lucia’s ghost looks on. Cops arrive at the mansion.

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Review:

Considering that the life left behind includes Russian poverty as well as an abusive ex, moving in with a rich, retired American surgeon offers an upgrade in more ways than one.  Anxious to provide optimistic opportunities for her young daughter Dasha, that’s the seemingly better choice facing Nina when an online bride-to-order service pairs her with Karl, a darkly charming suitor who comes complete with a luxuriously secluded mansion and suspiciously side-eyeing staff.

Writer/director Michael S. Ojeda, who previously provided sensationalized revenge with “Avenged/Savaged” (review here), often paints his sophomore thriller “The Russian Bride” with comically big strokes.  Whether it’s Karl villainously smoking a hoagie-sized cigar like a goodfella, making “Frankenstein” the favorite film of a gentle giant mute brute, or having a Saturday morning cartoon thunder peal accompany every kill during the climax, thematic subtlety doesn’t much interest the filmmaker.

Instead, Ojeda remains curiously content to put every playing piece on the board in act one.  Before Nina and Karl’s new marriage takes its first tumultuous turn, we’re introduced to a door demanded to remain unopened, a threatening dog that attacks on command, a pointed chandelier attached to a problematic chain winch, and Karl’s quaint comment, “I forgot to mention we have frequent power outages.”  “The Russian Bride” doesn’t establish a gun so much as it lays out an entire Chekhov’s arsenal of future story beats, all within a few film minutes of Nina and Dasha arriving at Karl’s Getty-esque estate.

Even though tealeaves arrange so anyone can clearly predict specific events, the bigger picture’s exact nature stays closer to the film’s chest.  “The Russian Bride” vaguely puts on an initial appearance of a Lifetime-like cautionary fable concerning a romancing rogue hiding an awful alter ego.  Nina certainly seems to be unwillingly signing herself up for some sort of sadistic physical torture.  While that’s partly true, suggestions involving a supernatural spirit, orchestrated executions, and imaginary whispers twist the movie into a larger mystery than its final reveals retroactively earn.

“The Russian Bride” isn’t exactly slow, and not necessarily uneventful either.  Yet copious misdirects convolute it at the expense of sustained entertainment.  An audience can’t invest in suspense when cliffhanging moments and various clues don’t coalesce toward a cohesive direction.  It’s the movie’s foggy clarity keeping character sympathies out of arm’s reach.

As Karl, Corbin Bernsen gives enough energy, both internally and externally, to wind the film back up when stalled momentum releases slack.  At a minimum, Bernsen’s scenery-gnawing performance fares more favorably than what would have been given by Eric Roberts or Malcolm McDowell, the type of economic go-tos who would have been gone to if the budget had one less zero.  “The Russian Bride” treads enough water to bob above an average DTV thriller, and Bernsen’s presence provides the lion’s share of that boost, particularly when several side actors read as grimacing greenhorns playing momentary make believe.

One other thorn trying to take air out of the effort is occasionally sloppy cinematography.  Likely the result of a tight calendar rushing coverage rather than outright thoughtless camerawork, lighting allows actors to regularly walk into overexposed hotspots or soft focus.  Color timing issues noticeably mismatch shots in certain exterior sequences too. “The Russian Bride” otherwise benefits from imposing production design coming courtesy of gorgeously chilly outside grounds and grand interiors making up the cavernous house.

Had director Michael S. Ojeda reached more sparingly into his script’s belt instead of taking every tool out at the beginning, “The Russian Bride” would be better positioned for maintaining its mystery and tightening tension.  A violently explosive ending makes up some ground lost on the winding path of plotting, although it also comes via a cocaine-fueled rage whose stripe of grindhouse campiness doesn’t synch with swaths of seriousness evidenced everywhere else beforehand.  The final verdict sentences “The Russian Bride” to status as an unevenly midrange excursion into mild madness whose premise has bark, but whose bite needs to clamp with firmer follow-through.

Review Score:  55

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