At about fifty four minutes long, the August Anthony Aquilar directed and Frank Phillip Aquilar written horror film The Gifted just about makes it into feature length territory. Despite the short length, this packs in quite a lot with a story set over three different time periods in a troubled woman's life.
Barbara (Ginger Lynn Allen - 31, The Devil's Rejects) has the unique ability to make anyone do what she says provided she first rings a magical bell. Rather than be a boon to her, this ability has become a curse over the years, with it causing no end of misery to her and those around her. In present day, she learns about a special priest (Joe Casterline) who it is said is able to grant absolution to special people such as her, all she has to do is confess to him her many sins.
This almost felt like an anthology of sorts, with the present day section of Barbara visiting the priest mixed in with three key moments from her life. One scene is set at a birthday party she had as a child (played by Kelsey Hayleigh), in which her in-debt father forces her to use her powers for evil. The middle section has her now in her twenties (played by Penelope Bohunko) at another party that goes terribly wrong, while the final segment takes place just before the wraparound. I enjoyed all of these sections, but it is probably the middle part that I liked the most due to the amount of craziness that Barbara's powers cause. These powers range from merely forcing people to go away, to forcing them to commit suicide and attack others.
Special effects were not bad, they sell what they are aiming for at the very least. The selection of actors felt well chosen, but for the character of Barbara, it was a bit strange that she looked wildly different in each of the three time periods shown. Characters refer to her by name a lot so it didn't get confusing, but certainly didn't look like the same person at different stages of their life. My favourite character featured in the middle part, a mostly normal seeming guy whose last words as he lay dying are lamenting that his favourite shirt has been ruined! On the whole I liked the story, with the exception of the poor finale, it came a bit out of left field and didn't make much sense. It felt more like a satisfying resolution couldn't be thought of, so over the top craziness was chosen instead. I did think flashbacks to key points of Barbara's life was a cool idea and it did work well.
The Gifted told an ambitious story for its short run time, and aside from the ending this was one that felt much better than I had assumed it would be. I liked the special effects, I liked the number of characters here, and I loved the bizarre atmosphere that often pervaded this, especially with the weird robed zombie little people who looked like they had crawled on over from the excellent Phantasm series! The Gifted is due to be released later this year, thanks to Strange Film Studios.
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