The Horror Show
Catch Hell
by Ryan Phillippe
I was bored last week, sitting home, mindlessly flipping through channels when I saw The Texas Chainsaw Massacre still had about 20 minutes left on Showtime (oh man, and those last 20 minutes are so damn good). After watching that, I saw that the next film was a horror film called Catch Hell starring Ryan Phillippe that I’d never heard of before. After reading the synopsis I figured, what the hell, seems promising enough. Because well, I haven’t seen Ryan Phillippe do much of anything lately and he’s still pretty drool-worthy.
The movie starts us off with Reagan Pearce (Phillippe), a washed up actor who has reluctantly taken a job in Louisiana for an indie-film with the hopes that he can get back into the acting game. He meets with the director face to face and immediately calls his agent from his cheap hotel room. Reagan is not happy with this job but unfortunately for him he’s gotta suck it up and act like he likes it.
The next morning, the crew shows up early to pick Reagan up and take him to the film set. But after a long strange drive takes him out into the middle of nowhere and one of the crew members steals his phone, Reagan realizes that he is not being taken to the film set, he’s being kidnapped. We find out that the man kidnapping Reagan is named Mike (Ian Barford), and Mike is holding a personal grudge toward Reagan for sleeping with his wife and ruining his marriage. (I would have thought it was because he was a wife-beating asshole, but meh.) Mike’s nephew, Junior (Stephen Louis Grush), is the dim-witted accomplice and they take Reagan to a swamp-hut in the middle of nowhere and chain him up. The pair proceeds to destroy Reagan’s already damaged career via social media by tweeting racist things and posting naked photos of Reagan’s exes. Not to mention Mike beats the hell out of Reagan and tortures him every chance he gets with the ultimate threat of “you’re not leaving here alive” looming over Reagan’s head.
That’s all I’ll give away plot-wise because Catch Hell is actually a decent movie and people should be watching it. It’s Phillippe’s directorial debut and I have to hand it to him, although the movie is basically a nod to his own life through fiction, it stands out to me because the acting was great and the storyline reflected a lot of current events, making the celeb kidnapping feel fresh. (Think social media disasters of celebs on Twitter and Instagram, and the nude photo leaks of late.)
The torture scenes are good, I think the ill-tempered redneck character was a bit overdone, but I understood why Mike’s character needed to be overacted in this way, because you really just need to hate him. And the alligators are always lurking around the hut, drawn to the scent of fresh blood, making the fact that Reagan is chained to the floor even more dangerous. But the real star here is Junior. Stephen Louis Grush is a fantastic actor and did a fabulous job in this role. Even though Junior was technically one of the bad guys, you really can’t help but like this character. The kidnapping storyline’s end was great, and there’s a cringe-worthy scene reminiscent of Deliverance waiting for you.
But I think was stood out most to me was the bizarre final scene. I looked it up on Google and Phillippe has stated that he included this in the film because he wanted to let viewers know that it was “okay to like Junior.” What made the scene even better was the song choice: “Satan Said Dance” by the band Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Often times a song choice can make or break a movie scene, and I must say, this song choice really made the scene that much better.
I would definitely recommend this film if you’ve got some time on your hands. (I’d actually recommend the song “Satan Said Dance” as well, it’s weird and catchy.) Like I stated earlier, Catch Hell isn’t entirely original, but it definitely brings original ideas to the table and freshens up old ones. It reminded me, while I was watching, of another movie called Captivity, only because of the whole celebrity kidnapping thing. And then wouldn’t you know it, Captivity actually came on Showtime after Catch Hell was over. Weird.
Stevie Kopas, HMS
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