Two decades ago, the Stone Cove citadel was the scene of the abduction of 14 children. The search to discover the perpetrator behind the incident led to no results, and the case was declared closed. For everyone but police officer Dwayne Hopper, whose tormented soul has found no rest since one unforgettable night saw his second male child disappear forever from his sight. During a routine inspection among the police department's cells, Dwayne makes the acquaintance of a new inmate, a pharmacist who answers to the name Ronald Perkins who begs him to make a phone call. One detail about Perkins immediately jumps out at the officer: a severed finger that will turn out to have been caused not exactly by an accident during a gardening session.
From the first announcements about its processing, Perkins 14 managed to arouse some interest among industry insiders, if not for the plot at least for the unique way the project came to life. Responsible for its origin is in fact the website Massify.com, on whose pages some time ago a poll was held to vote for the best idea to materialize into a horror feature film. This particular gestation has been going on under the "little" watchful eye of After Dark Films, a film studio that for the past 3 years has been concerned with selecting and distributing on the market a variable number of films to be proposed to fans of the genre. Among the most relevant titles so far distributed by this house might be mentioned Dario Piana's The Deaths of Ian Stone and Zev Berman's Borderland.
With due exceptions, the various editions of this review confirmed a general rather modest quality level of the works. Obviously, this trend has not been very favorable and has held back its dissemination in cinema circuits with the consequence that anyone who had nurtured the slightest interest in the 2008 selection had to wait for its distribution on DVD, which lasted until the end of March the following year.
Perkins 14 is one of those striking cases in which expectations, in spite of the tantalizing premises, are not matched by the proof of the facts. It comes naturally to blame this outcome on the voting majority who participated in the jailbird poll decreeing the victory of an idea that was probably better than its alternatives, or at least we trust that was the case, but lacking a vision up to the mark that would do it justice once brought to the screen.
Not knowing all the details, it would be too easy to blame those who acted as the voice of the people when the responsibility for reworking the various narrative suggestions and cues lies with the director and two other helpers. Thus, attempts to declare the script of the play as entirely the work of "our own" handiwork, as is shown in one of the many promotional trailers, are futile.
A victim of the haste and pressures that marred the various stages of production, Singer, former director of Dark Ride, is unclear about the identity he would like to assign to his creature.
The film consists of two partitions: a first half-hour, undoubtedly the best, in which the past of Perkins, played by Richard brake (Batman Begins, Hannibal Rising), a character too brash for the situation in which he finds himself, is investigated, and the remaining hour stuffed with chases, sieges and whatever else more banal you can think of. It is precisely in the second half that the film shows off all its limitations and flaws, which is also the fault of a cast of actors who are not very much in part and far from arousing the slightest sympathy. None of this is surprising: not even the selection of the performers has escaped the probing mechanics.
Perkins 14 does not convince or captivate due to a rampant approximation to be found both in the lack of imagination devoted to the proposed situations, which do not differentiate it from any movie about the living dead, and in the absence of any brilliant insight that would make it somehow memorable to watch. The details of the story, deserving of in-depth study, are neglected and the feeling of dealing with a superficial product never collapses throughout the viewing. The same approach can be seen in the poorly edited death scenes in which it is difficult to identify the real cause leading to the copious bloodshed.
Also poor is the characterization of the Perkins of the title, too anonymous although he was endowed with strong principles and ideals that guide his actions. And to think that his arguments and reasoning are somewhat convincing in that they expose the weakness and fickleness of the human being who never manages to put his actual needs and necessities on the back burner, even when he has to search for a missing loved one. Apart from this interesting theme, the film offers no other valid grounds for discussion, and the decisiveness of the ending does not raise it above mediocrity.
Perkins 14 is a typical case where a single, brilliant idea cannot hold the structure of an entire film.
Review by Antonio D'Astoli
