Very late at night, a crummy dinner. 30-something waitress Noreen is stuck with this job, with this life. Her boss is obnoxious and stingy. The regular customers boring as hell. But all of a sudden, a report on the radio speaks of the murder of an entire family in a town not too far from there and a shady guy played by Michael Madsen, who looks and acts like every character Madsen ever played in every B-movie he was ever part of walks in. And all hell breaks loose in the best (or worse, depends how you feel about it) tradition of Madsen B- movies.
I left a few details out so as to not spoil the plot but the thing is basically an overstretched thriller with a plot that relies on the most unlikely of coincidence. Writer/director Mark Young (who's got a list of crappy, forgettable credit on his resume) tries to make things tensed but since the characters are so bland and cliché, we don't really care about what happens. Several scenes are gory, almost going in horror territory but they don't really work. And so the film doesn't really work as a thriller and it's way too little to be an entertaining horror flick.
Young's writing and direction seems to point at Noreen (Amber Benson) as our protagonist but everything is so spread out, it's difficult to care about her. To her credit, Benson probably delivers the most engaging performance but that's not saying much considering every other character has little to no depth and most actors are mailing it in. Even underrated actor Kevin Gage is unremarkable, as he has nothing to work with most of the time.
Of course, because this stupid movie has no budget, the whole plot is confined to the crappy dinner, where almost nothing happens. What really, really kills the movie is its gloriously overextended climax. After 90 minutes or so of boring events, the resolution is a final confrontation between two characters that lasts five minutes of them basically arguing "yes", "no". I'm not kidding or exaggerating here. Over five FULL minutes of absolutely nothing happening. Talk about weak writing and directing here.
There are movies which have a good idea but a bad execution. There are movies that are all about a stupid plot but high entertainment values. And then there are B-movies like the Killing Jar, which have not much redeeming about them and seem entirely to be vehicles for actors in need of a paycheck. Looking at the producing credits, you will notice Michael Madsen's name as well as Harold Perrineau and that's pretty much all you need to know about this movie.
I've seen even worse movie than this one but I do think people can find much, much better than this, even in the realm of B-movies.
Avoid.
I left a few details out so as to not spoil the plot but the thing is basically an overstretched thriller with a plot that relies on the most unlikely of coincidence. Writer/director Mark Young (who's got a list of crappy, forgettable credit on his resume) tries to make things tensed but since the characters are so bland and cliché, we don't really care about what happens. Several scenes are gory, almost going in horror territory but they don't really work. And so the film doesn't really work as a thriller and it's way too little to be an entertaining horror flick.
Young's writing and direction seems to point at Noreen (Amber Benson) as our protagonist but everything is so spread out, it's difficult to care about her. To her credit, Benson probably delivers the most engaging performance but that's not saying much considering every other character has little to no depth and most actors are mailing it in. Even underrated actor Kevin Gage is unremarkable, as he has nothing to work with most of the time.
Of course, because this stupid movie has no budget, the whole plot is confined to the crappy dinner, where almost nothing happens. What really, really kills the movie is its gloriously overextended climax. After 90 minutes or so of boring events, the resolution is a final confrontation between two characters that lasts five minutes of them basically arguing "yes", "no". I'm not kidding or exaggerating here. Over five FULL minutes of absolutely nothing happening. Talk about weak writing and directing here.
There are movies which have a good idea but a bad execution. There are movies that are all about a stupid plot but high entertainment values. And then there are B-movies like the Killing Jar, which have not much redeeming about them and seem entirely to be vehicles for actors in need of a paycheck. Looking at the producing credits, you will notice Michael Madsen's name as well as Harold Perrineau and that's pretty much all you need to know about this movie.
I've seen even worse movie than this one but I do think people can find much, much better than this, even in the realm of B-movies.
Avoid.