Quench
By John Oak Dalton • Sep 25th, 2007 • Category: Horror, Reviews
After suffering a loss, a young man comes home to the midwest to try and rekindle an old friendship, but quickly learns that the friend he left behind has gravitated towards a new, sinister “family.” Zack Parker’s Quench bills itself as a “modern gothic tragedy,” with perhaps a bit of emphasis on the “gothic” and veined, so to speak, with dark horror undertones. Some explicit sex, and liberal use of blood, startle against the strikingly-shot Indiana landscapes.
Bo Barrett is strong in the lead, with capable support by Mia Moretti, a fragile beauty with a fractured sensibility. Unfortunately the acting support isn’t too deep off the bench, and it’s hard to root for the somewhat unlikeable characters.
Parker has, by and large, a good eye for shooting and editing, and shows solid production values; a memorable score also helps. The screenplay holds a few nice surprises (and a few unpleasant ones), though is relentlessly downbeat from fade up to fade down.
That being said, there is certainly a younger, more alienated and disenfranchised audience for Quench than myself, and I can envision this somber drama garnering cult appeal.
Three stars.
- Director: Zack Parker
- Writer: Brandon Owen and Zack Parker
- Cast: Bo Barrett, Mia Moretti, Ben Schmitt, Samantha Eileen DeTurk
- Running Time: Approximately 80 minutes
- Score:***
- More Information: Official Site
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John Oak Dalton is a Community Television Station Manager by day, and a DIY acolyte by night. In the 80s he made Super-8 movies and his own basement mix tapes. In the 90s he hosted a cable-access show and made his own zines and minicomics. In the 21st Century he began working with grassroots video and microcinema and writing b-movies, and has more than a dozen projects on the shelf, on screen, in development, or in production.
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