I'm quite hungover at the time of writing, and due to my self inflicted state it has taken me most the day to get through comedic horror film What I Meant to Say Was... This indie movie had a low budget of $3,000, and it shows with a rough edge that forever seemed to be straining at the limitations of what was there to work with. Initially my impressions were not great, but the film did find it's groove, making for a surprisingly charming effort.
While in the middle of sending an important text to his girlfriend Lana (Zoe Scarborough), Michael (Steve Wandling) accidentally crashes his car and dies. He awakens to discover he is in Hell, with his Virgil style guide, the demonic Chang (Gary Whorley who also wrote and directed this) telling him that he is in a special and quite specific circle that is home to everyone who died in a car crash while in the middle of sending an important text. Michael learns from Chang that there is a convoluted and lengthy journey he can take across Hell in order to be able to send the complete text to Lana. Teaming up with Chang, and a woman able to take Michael outside of his particular circle, Carmeletta (Jae Grace), Michael sets out on his quest.
This had a very low budget feel to everything, and initially this was something that I struggled to adjust to. I would say the first act is by far the weakest, with comedy that failed to hit every single time. For a film labelling itself as a comedy, there was nothing here whatsoever that made me even smile. Thankfully, the main trio of Michael, Chang, and Carmeletta really grew on me. While I think Michael made for a poor protagonist due to how cocky and lazy he was, the actual relationship between him and Lana was explained well. The film is split between the present day sections of the group in Hell, and a lot of flashback scenes set around a year in the past, detailing how Michael and Lana came to meet, and how they came to fall in love. With a red tint applied to all the Hell scenes, these flashbacks were a breath of fresh air due to being set in the real world without a filter. I might have only occasionally liked Michael, but Lana was a far better character, with Scarborough really shining.
I found Chang insufferable to begin with, the way he spoke, and poor sound design led to me not really being able to understand much of what he said. I was surprised to find this character really grew on me, by the film's conclusion he was perhaps my favourite character. The sound quality in general led to dialogue not being able to be heard properly by me, around halfway through the film I stuck on subtitles and that no longer became as so much of an issue.
At times the story got a bit meandering, the quest through Hell wasn't really explained that well, and so it was a bit of a fetch quest with them needing to locate various random objects. Showing the budget limitations, Hell pretty much takes place entirely within the confines of the corridors of a community centre, so it was hard to feel like the characters were ever making any progress. The interactions they had with the various dwellers of Hell felt random, and the script in general had a strange feel to it, so that conversations felt oddly unnatural. Every now and again the plot gets sidelined in order to give some kind of discourse on the relationship between men and women, with Chang and Carmeletta providing the opposite viewpoints. These parts didn't really fit in to the movie that well, but were fine. The real world sections were much better, with the flashbacks not really providing anything too unexpected, but featuring more consistent characters.
Despite the somewhat unlikeable protagonist, I still warmed up to What I Meant to Say Was..., it was charming, had a some great characters mixed in with the less memorable ones, and told a romantic story well. It is quite rough around the edges, the comedy didn't hit for me, and I feel it may have benefitted with a leaner run time, but I did find myself enjoying this more and more as it went on, developing a bit of an addictive quality. What I Meant to Say Was... can currently be streamed on Reveel, and is due to head to Amazon Prime and Apple TV in the future.
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