FilmArcade.net: "Quick Shop" Review

Quick Shop
Year: 2011
Director: Martin Binder
Stars: Chris Stevens, Rob Hercik, Tow Dwyer
Studio: Movies by Martin Productions
MPAA Rating: Not Rated
Running Time: 13 Mins

“Quick Shop” is a short film about Hunter and Trevor, who’ve recently became roommates in college. The two head to the countryside for a fun weekend, after Trevor has a falling out with his girlfriend. Along the way, they pull over a quick stop store that’s located in the middle of nowhere. Their road trip takes a turn for the worst, when one of them has to use the restroom. Once inside, Hunter and Trevor are locked inside the store with no way out. They soon learn that the store’s storekeeper is stalking them and looking to murder them, The two have to work together to find a way out, before the storekeeper hunts them down.

This is one of those films that doesn’t click with you until the very end. Writer/director Martin Binder’s direction was good. One of things that makes the direction work, the fact that he was able to make everything in the convenient store work well. Binder was able to make this work, by getting a location that didn’t feel cheesy with the limited resources at his disposal. The location really does a good job getting the atmosphere that is needed to his story work. Sometimes, a location can make you forget that your watching a camcorder film. The other that makes his direction and this film ultimately work for me, the way that Binder handles the performances. I thought, the performances here were very good. He does a very good job getting the performances out of the actors. This was one film that it took a while for me to be interested, but the performances aspects were handled in a way that everything worked it’s self out. Once the characters became interesting on the page, it instantly connected to the performances. It quite frankly saved this film, from becoming a mediocre film.

The screenplay written by Binder and co-writer John Leary looked like one that I was ready to rip on, until the last five minutes of the film changed my feeling about it. The ending was handled very well, as I thought it wasn’t predictable. The writers do a very good job catching you off guard. I was truly fooled into what was going to happen next, as this looked like this was going to be one of those by the books thriller. The other thing that they did well, they hid the killer’s identity. My thought was after the first scene was “oh no, I’m going to be in for a boring and unentertaining story“. Thankfully, that was not the case. Even though, the first scene felt like a throwaway scene. I can forgive it, because played more into the twist than in the actual story.

If there one criticism that I have with Binder and Leary’s screenplay, the lead characters should have been more interesting from the first time that appeared on the screen. They were interesting in the last half of the film, but the characters didn’t work for me in the introduction. For a short film of this nature to instantly grab my interest, the characters have to be interesting for the entire time. If this was a full length feature, then I would give it a little more leeway. That’s what holding it back from being a very good screenplay.

“Quick Shop” is a film that was for the most part entertaining, but there is a couple of things that holds it back from being very good.

For more information on this film, you can visit the film’s official website at: http://www.quickshopmovie.com.

Review Rating: Three Stars