The Basement (2018)

  • Directed by Brian M. Conley, Nathan Ives
  • Written by Nathan Ives, Brian M. Conley, Sean Decker
  • Stars Jackson Davis, Cayleb Long, Mischa Barton
  • Run Time: 1 Hour, 28 Minutes
  • Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_BVi4vHnAM

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This was quickly monotonous. It’s overacted with the main guy working way too hard at it, seeming very forced. We grew so weary of it that after a while, we fast-forwarded to the end to see how things wrap up. A promising premise was disappointing.

Spoilery Synopsis

A man with the Gemini symbol on his shirt turns on a blowtorch as a tied-up woman screams, “I can change!” Credits roll.

We cut to Kelly watching her husband, Craig, play the piano. She sends him out for some more champagne. He drives his Lamborghini to a scuzzy convenience store and notices a headline about the “Gemini Killer Still at Large.” We see that he’s texting someone who’s not his wife. Someone in the van parked next to him opens the door and pulls him in. He’s the next victim!

Craig wakes up tied to an old-style student desk in a dark room. Suddenly, a clown marches in. Billy the clown plays circus music and juggles for Craig. Kelly calls on Craig’s phone, and the clown makes note of her address. Billy the clown eventually leaves Craig alone.

A policeman comes into the basement and points his gun at Craig. No, wait, it’s the same guy who was dressed like a clown earlier, but now he’s dressed like a cop. The cop leaves and is replaced by a detective with a hat, badge, cigarette, and the whole works. Yes, it’s the same man as well. He interrogates Craig, whom he calls Billy, about a murder last night. He knocks out a few of Craig’s teeth and makes him swallow them.

Kelly, Craig’s wife, goes to the convenience store looking for him. The clerk, Lauren, says they don’t have security cameras outside. She calls the police, who tell her that Craig has to be gone 24 hours before they’ll do anything.

Craig realizes that the “detective” he’s talking to is Bill, and that means something to him, but we don’t know what. Suddenly, he starts telling Bill what he wants to know.

Bill leaves but soon returns in a prison uniform, and he’s been waiting for revenge. At 27 minutes in, it’s clear where this is going, and I start playing games on my phone. I look over, and Kevin’s got two games going at once. This is a new level of awful. The prisoner tells Craig stories, but as viewers, we don’t have any reason to believe, or even pay attention to any of it, because Bill is obviously insane. He cuts off some of Craig’s fingers.

Kelly’s friend Bianca comes over; she’s the woman who was texting Craig about their affair. Kelly knows Craig is having an affair with someone, but Bianca looks surprised and puzzled.

Back in the basement, a “doctor” comes in to treat Craig. There’s a bit of gore as Bill sews the wounded fingers back together while speechifying all the while. Bill comes back again as a lawyer who’s trying to keep Craig from the electric chair.

<Fast forward about forty-five minutes>

Billy’s now wearing an executioner’s black hood, and Craig’s in much worse shape, drooling and apologizing to Kelly and recording his last message. The Gemini Killer lights up his blowtorch, just as we saw in the pre-credit scene, and Craig screams in terror. He burns off Craig’s head with the cutting torch.

Kelly complains on the phone about the police refusing to help, but then a very familiar-looking police officer comes to her door. “It’s done,” he tells her. Bianca’s on the couch unconscious, and she asks him to “take out the trash on the way out.”

One month earlier, Kelly talks to Bill about his acting. They’re twins, and she knows he’s the Gemini Killer. “I want you to kill my husband.”

Commentary

This is like one of those acting classes where the teacher makes the student work through a handful of completely unrelated scenes and characters to see how good an actor they are for a stage play. These guys aren’t that good, so it gets tedious very quickly. Jackson Davis tries way too hard to “act” here, and it’s so unsubtly bad that it’s cringy to watch. If he really had multiple personalities, he’d be a lot more subtle.

Kevin says he could forgive this a lot more if this were an indie movie, but it’s not. This was a studio production that had a writer, director, and all that stuff. How this film happened is beyond my comprehension.

For the past nine months or so, I’ve been comparing all terrible movies to Skinamarink. “It’s still better than Skinamarink” has almost gotten to be my catchphrase.

No more. In the future, everything gets compared to this boring, overacted shitfest.