Honestly, it was not until after I had watched Bereavement that I realised that it was a prequel to the film Malevolence made in 2004 (which I promptly watched afterwards before writing this review). I suppose I watched them in the right order chronologically though, which surely counts for something. Bereavement is much smoother and glossier than Malevolence, giving it a higher quality feel from the get-go – although this may have been because the director (Steven Mena) was given a bigger budget now that he had become a bit more established. It’s a shame because I really get the impression that Steven Mena is passionate about what he does, yet there are still a number of flaws which need to be addressed before I would consider Bereavement a sterling success. It was definitely watchable, let me assure you, but it lacked any real substance and originality, for me.
The basic story here is that a boy is abducted by this lunatic (played by Brett Rickaby, who has also been in the remake of The Crazies) as a sort of ‘apprentice’ type of situation, trying to teach him how to torture and kill women (why it is always women, I don’t know). Unfortunately, there are a vast number of clichés throughout this film which does get a little tiring after a while. There’s the abandoned meat packing/slaughterhouse factory, the complete psychopath who abducts young women and kills them, as well as a big fire as the grand finale. Whilst these things weren’t necessarily done badly, it is a shame that the same recycled material gets used and used when there are so many other avenues to explore. I personally didn’t feel like the interactions between the psychopath and the boy had nearly enough screen time, which is something that could have made for some very interesting viewing. Instead, the director opted for hysterical females crying and yelling to fill an unnecessarily long amount of the film – something which, contrary to popular belief, is not scary as such and borders on annoying when used excessively.
A lot of the characters make some damn foolish decisions during the film which makes it hard to really get into and sympathise with them (for example, the main girl, played by Alexandra Daddario, tells a little girl to stay in her room as the house slowly burns to the ground!). I find this frustrating to watch, as well as an idiotic scene where the boy (played by Nolan Gerard Funk – who has appeared inDeadgirl and is in the recent House at the End of the Street) is trying to get her out so she can escape, yet she fails to warn him about the crazy guy approaching from behind. I mean, duh! Perhaps I’m just being nitpicky here, but I like the characters in films to act in at least a vaguely realistic way so that I can actually identify with them. Is that so much to ask for?
This film is actually a rather bleak one, and so it is hard to say that you really ‘enjoyed’ it as such. That’s not a criticism, I suppose, but something worth mentioning at least. Although, I did like the fact that there were some attempts made to give each of the characters more background and substance (some of which worked better than others), however, Bereavement is not really a film that you’d watch more than once. Because I saw this one first, the ending did come as more of a surprise which is a happy accident – though, there were already lingering suspicions. towards the direction it was going in.
Basically, I think that Bereavement is a fair enough horror film for an early director (as Steven Mena is) but hopefully once he has a few more titles to his name, he’ll develop the skills not to fall into the same traps which this film fell into. That being said, it was more the general storyline that had the biggest flaws (which Steven Mena also wrote), the cinematography was perfectly fine. Bereavement is definitely better than the first one, Malevolence, meaning that he is already on a learning curve – and with talk of a third part to this story, I have expectations that he’ll once again step up his game. As far as the third film goes, I’m not sure what else there is left to tell, however, I wish him all the best with it because it could very well be the start of something great.
