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Posted on Monday, November 2nd, 2009 6:20:47 GMT by: rochefort
Posted under: movie review horror comedy romance

Year: 2009
Directors: Travis Betz
Writers: Travis Betz
IMDB: link
Trailer: link
Review by: rochefort
Rating: 4 out of 10

Justin (Ward Roberts) is an unexceptional guy who works at the usual McJob. His life gets interesting with the arrival of April (Sarah Lassez), an eccentric little cutie whose only apparent possession is a book locked in a box that she carries everywhere she goes. Justin is immediately smitten with her, and before long she moves in and all seems right with the world. But April, see, is a demon, and her fellow minions of evil soon find her and take her back to hell. So lovesick Justin opens her locked box and uses the book, a tome for summoning demons, to call forth Lo (Jeremiah Birkett), a lesser demon of Hell, who must do whatever Justin commands as long as his steadily shrinking pentagram keeps the demon at bay. Justin orders Lo to return April to him, but getting a demon out of hell is even more difficult than it sounds. Billed as a "comedic love story... with demons!", "Lo" is a modern variation on the "Faust" story and has its clever moments, but ultimately its reach way exceeds its grasp.
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Travis Betz's third feature, "Lo" is what you get when you mix a Peter Greenaway or Ken Russell movie with one of the wackier episodes of "Buffy" or "Angel". Essentially a filmed stage play, most of the movie takes place in a single darkened environment with spotlights on the key characters, the occasional flashback presented in a very lo-fi, stylized set. The makeup designs, particularly those of the title character and his demon associate Jeez (Devin Barry), are top-notch and highly effective, which is especially important since they spend so much time onscreen, often in long takes. Since this is a (very) low-budget affair, the bulk of the film consists of an extended conversation between the two main characters as Lo tries to trick and distract Justin into abandoning his quest for April, and both Roberts and Birkett do fine work, good enough to distract us from the fact that both of them spend most of the running time sitting or lying in the same spot. Roberts is affably nerdy, and Birkett seems to be having a lot of fun making Lo both despicable and slovenly charming, often coming off like a zombified David Johansen. The rest of the cast doesn't fare as well, however. Lassez tries too hard to make April both weird and lovable, failing at both, and Barry's depiction of the bird-beaked, nasally fey Jeez gets seriously annoying within seconds. He's a demon, so I guess this is to be expected, but his is a real fingernails-on-a-chalkboard performance, and the film sinks drastically every minute he's onscreen.

But the biggest disappointment about "Lo" is the fact that it is simply too obviously padded. Clocking in at 82 minutes, it's easily twice as long as it deserves to be, and every scene suffers from Betz's need to make the runtime acceptably feature length. Cutaways and inserts hold too long, a bartender's dance number is thrown inexplicably into the mix, and as well-written as some of the dialogue is, it's apparent that not a single line was excised in the editing room. At one point Justin's hand becomes possessed and starts talking to him, and instead of enhancing the weirdness it simply reminds us of how much more exciting it was when Ash did the same thing in "Evil Dead 2". And every time the film returns to the aforementioned flashbacks, it pretty much sucks all the air out. The set is bordered by two mugging, gold-painted, "theatre of pain"-style faces who frown and smile at every other line. Weird comedy or not, they're so irritating that you can't help but wonder what the hell Betz was thinking, especially when he cuts away to them, again, for the thirtieth time.

And yeah, I can't help but feel like a bit of a jerk for being so harsh on what is clearly an ambitious little horror comedy. "Lo" easily stands out from the pack by shooting for much artier heights than most micro-budget pictures of its kind, and it's always tempting to root for the underdog. I had to consciously decide to sit on this review because I wanted to see if my opinion changed as a day or two went by; maybe, in light of just how rare it's becoming to see original and distinct new films, I would come around to Betz's vision and give this movie the slow-burn credit it perhaps deserves. But I can still remember walking out of the theater feeling like I'd just seen a technically-adept, but undeniably cloying, community college stage play. And now, days later, I'm convinced that the only version of "Lo" I could ever hope to enjoy would be the much, much shorter version it should have been in the first place.

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