Insane Like Me? is a vampire film that was directed and co-written (alongside main actor Britt Bankhead) by Chip Joslin in his directorial debut. The story is ambitious and there seemed an impressive amount of characters in this indie film. There are moments of greatness to be found, but you have to dig deep for these scenes due to some bizarre choices made along the way.
Jake Morgan (Bankhead) is a combat veteran who has recently returned from a tour of duty overseas. He heads to an old abandoned hotel one dark night with his girlfriend Samantha (Grace Patterson - Reflect), her brother Will (Paul Kolker), and Will's girlfriend Josie (Meg Hobgood) on the pretext of investigating its shady past, but instead discovers a surprise party is actually being held there. The real surprise comes when it is discovered that many of the party guests are actually vampires, with Jake having to fight for his life to escape. Sadly, along the way, Samantha is captured by the monsters, and even worse, Jake is arrested by the local Sheriff (Eric Roberts - Arena Wars, The Expendables), who happens to be Sam's father and blames the man for her disappearance. With no one believing Jake's story about vampires, he is committed to an asylum for the criminally insane where he remains locked up for the next nine years. Eventually being released, Jake returns to the town, intent on finding out what happened to his beloved Sam, and determined to kill those responsible.
There are parts of this movie that were really quite bad, there are also some good moments, but these are slight in comparison. I thought the prologue set during the surprise party wasn't terrible, even if the very sudden reveal of vampires came across as a bit comedic. The way Jake with no prior knowledge of the creatures being real and is then suddenly able to start effectively fighting them was amusing, but it was a chaotic and fun scene. The first biggest problem for me was the time skip to nine years later. This seemed such a weird choice as despite Jake being in a sadistically run asylum for nearly a decade he is in fighting fit state both physically and mentally when he leaves, acting like only a few days have passed. I couldn't see any reason why it needed to be such a long jump in time other than Sam's sister Crystal (Samantha Reddy) having grown from a child to a young adult in that time frame, and so having more compassion for an obviously still grieving Jake. The script is frequently terrible, over explaining the most common concepts, while the acting is very patchy. Some characters like Jake and Crystal are decent enough characters (Jake reminding me of Jack Reacher a little bit), but there are a large chunk of the supporting cast who display some poor acting skills, or at the very least appear like they are saying their lines for the very first time.
The story and pacing is all over the place, with the core story never being explained very well and full of plot holes. Later revelations have you questioning the motivations and decisions of certain characters, while parts such as Will and Josie somehow attributing the prologue vampire attack to them being drunk and seeing things was ridiculous. Characters vanish off screen presumed dead only to appear live and well later on, while other characters leave scenes and are then later revealed to have been killed without it shown on camera. The motivations for the antagonist are very unclear, and while it was fun to see the very prolific Roberts in a role more than a guest appearance for a change, his character wasn't the most well developed.
After the entertaining prologue it is about thirty five minutes until the horror begins again. This downtime almost felt like a different film, mainly following Crystal and her insufferable friends, and showing Jake's apparent recent return to town. It does pick up for the final act, and the action scenes were never dull. Special effects are nearly non existent, with vampires dragging their victims to the ground while CGI looking blood spurts out. The blood effects on characters does look great however, so it wasn't all bad. It culminates in a confused return to the prologue hotel where characters make all sorts of bizarre choices. There are some good moments, the cars used are great looking, I loved the bit where Jake pins a vampire to a tree with the car he is driving. In general the action scenes are solid with plenty going on, and there were some kill scenes that I would expect to usually be shown off camera actually shown, so that was cool.
Insane Like Me? wasn't a good film, with the main issue being the story and the way it was presented. When it comes to action there are some good moments here, but with such a wonky script and some half hearted performances this didn't stand out as one of the better ones in the genre. Insane Like Me? releases June 4th on Cable and Digital VOD across the US and Canada from DeskPop Entertainment.
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