The Horror Show
Repentance
by Philippe Caland
The movie Repentance had all the ingredients to be a magical journey of horror. A New Orleans setting, a stellar cast, and a great story.
The movie begins with Tommy (Anthony Mackie) and his brother Ben (Mike Epps) driving home from a night of (obviously) heavy drinking and getting into a horrible car accident. Fade to black. Sometime later, we find Tommy has written about his “near death experience” and has gone on to add best-selling author to his already impressive resume’ of psychiatrist and spiritual advisor. Enter the very troubled Angel (Forest Whitaker) who can’t seem to get over the mysterious death of his mother and struggles with bipolar disorder. Angel approaches Tommy at one of his book signings and presents the worn pages of Tommy’s best-selling book “Don’t Look Back” and inquires about booking a one on one session with the doctor-turned-author in order to work out some of his issues. But the audience is smarter than that, and we know Angel has something up his sleeve from the moment we see him.
If you can get past the painstakingly slow first half hour of this movie, you’ll be pleasantly surprised at the delightful mix of voodoo, ghosts, psychological torment, physical torture and kidnapping that ensues during the journey into the depths of Repentance. However, I must say that with the cast, I feel the movie could have been so much more.
I think that what killed this movie for me was that most of the character interaction felt forced and meaningless. Forest Whitaker, as always, does an amazing job in his part. He hits the nail on the head in portraying the absolute hell he’s been living in since his mother was killed. I have definitely seen Anthony Mackie do a better job in his other films, and I hate to say it, but horror is not his strong suit. But you would think with two great actors, you’d definitely get some great chemistry for the movie, but I feel this was missed by a longshot. The best parts of Mackie and Whitaker’s character interactions are when Angel is beating Tommy senseless with a pillow case full of broken glass or when Angel is reading his “favorite quotes” from Tommy’s book, then forcing him to play along with his sick and twisted version of a therapy session.
But it wasn’t just the chemistry between the two leads that was lacking; it was the anticlimactic and pointless ending. Perhaps if the movie had stressed the theme of spirituality more than it actually did (and not what it thought it did) I would have understood and accepted the fate of our cast when the credits rolled, but I really was more bewildered than anything.
What the movie did well in portraying, was a haunted and tormented soul with no other course of action to take but what he feels is the deserved revenge upon the man responsible for his mother’s death (according to a voodoo psychic).
If you’ve got time to kill and are looking for a new horror film with some very Misery-esque bits thrown in, don’t expect the world to be handed to you on a silver platter with Repentance, just expect a decent flick to watch on your couch on a Friday night.
Stevie Kopas, HMS
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