It’s rare that a film can be considered good when it takes place in basically only one room. This isn’t one of those times…it’s just rare. The Betrayed is a thriller, but it’s terribly hard to be thrilled when you can see every angle of the room at all times. The door that separates our girl from our villains is made of glass, so you can always see someone coming. Of course, because of lighting you see the person’s larger-then-life shadow approaching a few moments ahead. Which can be scary. It wasn’t here, but again…just mentioning.
Some productions have done the one room thing well. 12 Angry Men was a movie that was interesting from beginning to end and it took place in a jury room. A special episode of the big 90s show Homicide: Life on the Street took place entirely in the interrogation room and it was captivating. Now this is a show that normally took place as the detectives hit the pavement, running all around Baltimore to close a case. But this one episode, “Three Men and Adena,” is just about a single night where detectives try to draw a confession, and it’s very compelling. It’s certainly possible to create drama around one space. This film, however, is not an example of a successful one-room drama.
The thrills are also cut short because the sound quality was so bad that you will constantly need a remote in hand to turn it up and back down again. You can’t hear any soft dialogue whatsoever, but right when you turn the dial to make it audible...BAM! A roaring car crash flashback blows your eardrum out. The main thrill from this thriller came from dialing up and dialing volume back down to suit your needs.
The story begins with Jamie Taylor (Melissa George) shown post-car accident, in a dungeon-like back room of a warehouse. The room is bare save for an industrial showerhead that hangs in the center of the room, over a drain in the floor. The art director must’ve had fun with the oldest tricks in the book: how to make a thriller/horror movie’s scary dungeony set. Step 1) Low lighting. Step 2) Grays and browns only. Step 3) Some type of industrial style warehouse. That sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Yeah, right out of my rulebook. OK, my rules came after this movie. But still. It seemed like a copycat of something. Basically everything ever made in the genre.
Jamie and her young son are captured by a masked man (Oded Fehr). He tells her that her husband Kevin has been involved in illegal activity and wants money from his bank account. Jamie pleads that he’s an upstanding citizen and has never committed a crime. The masked man reveals months of tapes he has retrieved from wire tapping Jamie and Kevin’s home, granting Jamie with the task of going through the tapes to discover where Kevin has kept the money. Money that she doesn’t even think exists. At the risk of losing her son, she is forced to discover truths while withstanding various levels of persecution from her attackers.
Although I can’t be sure this was writer/director Amanda Gusack’s intention, The Betrayed employed shades of a pitiable genre: torture porn. For those unfamiliar with the term, it’s the blurring of the line between eroticism and horror. I wouldn’t say it embodies the category by any means, but a few scenes were certainly questionable. The camerawork was rather selective and parts of the film played with voyeurism and female sexuality. Honestly, I hope I’m over-speculating on this one because the genre completely disgusts me. These few scenes broke up the monotony of an otherwise poor excuse for a thriller. You should enjoy a movie as you watch it. Beginning, middle, end. This isn’t one of those films, just mentioning again. Instead with The Betrayed, you’ll just be waiting for the credits so you can at least see how it ends. You’ve put in your time, so you won’t walk away. But you won’t enjoy the ride.
DVD Bonus Features
Usually there’s at least something to write for this section of these reviews, but with the straight-to-DVD release of this one, there are no extra features to speak of.
"The Betrayed" is on sale July 30, 2009 and is rated NR. Thriller. Written and directed by Amanda Gusack. Starring Melissa George, Donald Adams, Blaine Anderson, Christian Campbell, Scott Heindl, Oded Fehr.
