Terry Ross (director)
(studio)
18 (certificate)
99 (length)
01 November 2020 (released)
02 November 2020
Cherry pie, apple pie and pies generally have cropped from time to time in horror and fantasy if not having quite enough to have its own little sub-genre. The likes of Thinner and Sweeney Todd being the most obvious while more recently the overwhelmingly psychological and excellent The Swerve features a pie.
We are in small town USA and a man suddenly appears and is immediately on the run, while Ellinore (Honey Lauren) is getting her cherry pie wrong, which isn’t good as it one her main dishes in her roadside cafe.
On the road are a struggling band on their way to a festival. The journey is getting to them and we are soon aware that they are the road trip stereotypes, with the alpha male Nate (John Salandria), the bright one Wendy (Amber Gaston), the outsider gothy one Lily (Sarah J Bartholomew) and the cautious one Kyle (Mark Valeriano).
These are all set up in one scene in which the two blokes have a confrontation with Nate doing all the pushing and taunting so on and so forth. There’s a short backstory as to why there is this resentment soon kicked into touch as the man appears and disappears.
The four pull into the town of Angel Fall and the cafe where they are greeted by Ellinore and offered cherry pie. Their attention is drawn to the photos that decorate the walls that are strange, white backgrounds with the subjects in contrived, artificial poses. City people that they are they take these as provincial efforts, start to crack jokes, ridiculing the photographer and images.
What transpires is probably not going to surprise too many but nonetheless writer F. Scott Mudgett has enough twists and turns to keep the attention, and it’s well directed by Terry Ross setting up a few tense scenes and a pretty good finale though poses a lot of questions.
The four road trippers are solid in their characters though don’t any elicit any real sympathy. That flows towards Ellinore, and Lauren is pretty good in a role that could have been little more than her being a crunching scene stealer. It turns out to be much more sensitive and nuanced.
Sweet Taste of Souls is available now on Video on Demand
