By Marc S. Sanders
A ghost story works best when a mystery can be upheld. Something so shocking or fascinating must draw you in and stay with you so that you want to look around every nook and cranny you see on screen and uncover clues that will eventually give you solid answers to the questions you have. Writer/director Tyler Chipman, partnered on a script with David Purdy, to deliver The Shade. His prowess with a camera had me darting my eyes from one corner of the screen to the next.
Newcomer Chris Galust portrays Ryan, a pot smoking student, who looks after his younger brother James (Sam Duncan) while his mother Renee (Laura Benanti) works the late shifts at the hospital. When he is not delivering pizzas or working on his talents for tattoo artistry, Ryan is attending sessions with a mental health counselor (Michael Boatman) to discuss his attacks of anxiety. Except that is an understatement. Ryan awakens from night terrors where he encounters a ghoulish woman in skeletal white skin. Charlotte Stickles portrays this phantom, known as The Harpy, and she puts on a terrifying performance to complement her grotesque makeup design.
These haunting episodes seem to amplify once Ryan’s disturbed brother Jason (Dylan McTee) returns home from school. Jason is usually stand offish. He’s disrupting the house in the middle of the night with loud death metal music blaring from his room. He looks exhausted with a pale complexion and droopy eyes, and the two older brothers seem to get into bouts with one another very easily.
Chipman and Purdy plant a lot of intriguing seeds for a good campfire thriller. I was curious through the whole course of the film. The cast is especially top notch with an engaging performance from Chris Galust. It’s easy to buy into all of his fear and panic.
Tyler Chipman is also a promising filmmaker. He’s got magnificent shots that made me blink twice because I am not a jump scare kind of guy. So, when Ryan opens a medicine cabinet or the creaking door of Jason’s bedroom, for example, and there’s a change in angle, I got nervous for what would appear on the other side. Camera shots loom on a darkened closet where something appears to be crawling inside of it. All of this is very effective work in shot, editing and performance combined.
The prologue to the film is positively eye catching. Tyler Chipman depicts a late-night ride out to a cemetery and the whole sequence is cut beautifully, with a nervous, young boy staying back by the headlights of the truck, to the inebriated father who slovenly walks towards a tombstone and draws a gun from his pocket to a flame that goes out of control, and then on to the figures cloaked in black who emerge from the darkened woods. The film had my attention from the start.
Yet, despite a solid cast, I wish the script for The Shade was stronger. There’s too much written for the Ryan character from his job at the pizza place, to working on his tattoo art, and then providing scenes with friends at a campfire and sharing time with a girlfriend. All the side characters in these various locations, do not serve much purpose. Most of these people are unnecessary, including Ryan’s girlfriend Alex (Mariel Morino), who is never put in danger and never lends to the mystery at hand. Morino is doing the job that the script demands of her but her character does not hold enough weight to belong in the final cut of the film. Simply being a worrier for Ryan is not enough.
As well, Michael Boatman’s character works more like a collector of information than someone who can lend some clues or new intel to the mystery of The Shade. During one of a handful of scenes with Boatman, Galust’s character only seems to relay an experience that the audience has already seen. Once Ryan finishes his description, the moment ends and nothing new is established. This is just repetitive.
Benanti’s character could have served more purpose, as the mother to these characters. Not enough exposition is provided for the ghostly encounters that Ryan experiences, and I was hoping Benanti’s character would offer some Act 3 surprising insight and development. Renee always looked like she had a twist in the story to share.
Tyler Chipman needs to continue on with his filmmaking career. He knows how to handle a camera that will lead to impactful edits with effective imagery, and he cast his film very, very well. Yet, the writing of the script is too crowded with unnecessary characters that serve no purpose and weigh down the storyline. Instead of arguing over who should be buttering a pizza crust or having a drawn-out drunken fight during a campfire outing, more attention could have been put towards the set up provided in the first few scenes of The Shade.
As I understand through IMDb, Chipman first made this tale into a film short. I’d be up for seeing a director’s cut of The Shade now that it is a full movie. I want to learn more about The Harpy and her direct connection to Ryan and his family. I imagine mom and Jason have more to share. I simply wish they offered more of their knowledge in the finished product.
2 UNPAID MOVIE CRITICS!!!! 