DEADLINE postulates a horror novelist whose gory fantasies intrude on his real life, and eventually drive him mad.
Steve Lesse (Stephen Young) sleepwalks through an unsatisfying lifestyle despite enjoying success from the sale of his novels, one of which is being made into a movie. At a college lecture, he shows an upchuck-inducing movie clip to an audience that complains about the intense ultra-violence in his work. Later, he becomes distraught over incompetence on the movie set, and at the end of the day must face an disgruntled wife. His marriage deteriorates and he has no time for his children.
Director Azzopardi, who wrote the script with Dick Oleksiak, contrasts this situation with Lesse's sick fantasies, which play out in his mind as well as in the story proper. For example, a bizarre segment showing the murderous antics of a vampire nun, turns out not to be happening in Lesse's head but as a scene playing out on a movie set.
Once the study in contrasts in set up, however, Azzopardi is content to merely follow Lesse in decline, repeating the is-it-real-or-not routine for 90 depressing minutes. Lesse's wife becomes a drug addict, his two sons kill their sister (imitating a scene in one of his movies), and understandably he cannot deliver his next script on time. The only time the Canadian-made DEADLINE breaks during its own downhill slide is during the little girl's murder, in which Lesse fantasizes he sees her hanging by the neck on a movie screen the moment she dies for real.
If this weren't hard enough to endure, the atrocities rattling around in Lesse's head are variously trite (e.g., fetus kills mother during birth) or nonsensical (man is chewed up in a possessed snow blower). The horror is expertly gross but does not comment adequately on Lesse's real versus "reel" life.
In the final scene, Lesse finally completes his script and points a loaded gun at the camera/viewer. Perhaps he becomes aware of the audience watching the movie DEADLINE, which in turn unreels his self-destruction. In his madness, Lesse attempts to blow us away. This parting shot further dulls Azzopardi's anti-violence sentiment, which had already collapsed an hour earlier in a welter of spraying blood and crunching bone.
Steve Lesse (Stephen Young) sleepwalks through an unsatisfying lifestyle despite enjoying success from the sale of his novels, one of which is being made into a movie. At a college lecture, he shows an upchuck-inducing movie clip to an audience that complains about the intense ultra-violence in his work. Later, he becomes distraught over incompetence on the movie set, and at the end of the day must face an disgruntled wife. His marriage deteriorates and he has no time for his children.
Director Azzopardi, who wrote the script with Dick Oleksiak, contrasts this situation with Lesse's sick fantasies, which play out in his mind as well as in the story proper. For example, a bizarre segment showing the murderous antics of a vampire nun, turns out not to be happening in Lesse's head but as a scene playing out on a movie set.
Once the study in contrasts in set up, however, Azzopardi is content to merely follow Lesse in decline, repeating the is-it-real-or-not routine for 90 depressing minutes. Lesse's wife becomes a drug addict, his two sons kill their sister (imitating a scene in one of his movies), and understandably he cannot deliver his next script on time. The only time the Canadian-made DEADLINE breaks during its own downhill slide is during the little girl's murder, in which Lesse fantasizes he sees her hanging by the neck on a movie screen the moment she dies for real.
If this weren't hard enough to endure, the atrocities rattling around in Lesse's head are variously trite (e.g., fetus kills mother during birth) or nonsensical (man is chewed up in a possessed snow blower). The horror is expertly gross but does not comment adequately on Lesse's real versus "reel" life.
In the final scene, Lesse finally completes his script and points a loaded gun at the camera/viewer. Perhaps he becomes aware of the audience watching the movie DEADLINE, which in turn unreels his self-destruction. In his madness, Lesse attempts to blow us away. This parting shot further dulls Azzopardi's anti-violence sentiment, which had already collapsed an hour earlier in a welter of spraying blood and crunching bone.