This movie hits the trifecta of indy filmmaking foibles. It's got an unlikable, unsympathetic main character, a plot that leaves big chunks of the story untold and a muddled theme that makes less sense the more you think about it.
Terell Lessor (Eugene Byrd) is a former computer hacker who, for never explained reasons, returns to New York City after being away for years. Fueled by repressed resentment for his mother (Melissa Leo) and festering anger at a world he feels has treated him unfairly, Terell turns himself into a video vigilante. He begins videotaping people without their knowledge, editing the footage into a compromising form and then posting it to a website as a "confession" of who the people really are. He catches a middle class father masturbating to computer porn, a business executive pressuring his secretary into sex and a venture capitalist that Terell provokes into an angry outburst.
These videos become an internet sensation, which is the most believable part of the story because far dumber things have caught on with the web-going public, and that leads to Terell hooking up with radical college student Olivia Averill (Ali Larter) who pushes Terell to more extreme and symbolic actions. Terell starts kidnapping people and forcing them to "confess" on camera, which leads to him hiding out from the FBI in Olivia's apartment.
As Olivia pushes Terell and the growing sentiment inspired by him in more violent and destructive ways, Terell gets sick and tired of the whole thing and turns himself in to the authorities, but only after cutting a deal for no jail time. This catapults Terell from internet icon to pop culture juggernaut, until he gets sick and tired of that and fakes his own death. The end.
As you can tell, Confess starts out with a decent premise but never figures out where to go with it. It just pulls the plug on its Howard Beale-esque tale of a man lashing out at society and the unexpected ripples he produces and goes off on an unfocused tangent about the commodification of celebrity that springs out of nowhere. The beginning and the middle of the story have a little in common, but neither has a thing to do with the end. It's like writer/director Stefan C Schaefer decided to take the movie in an unexpected direction and was unconcerned with how little structural or thematic sense it made.
Worse than the plot, however, is the supposed hero of the film. I would guess that Terell Lessor is supposed to the average person who's been screwed by the system. What he is, though, is a whiny, self-centered, arrogant loser with adolescent grievances the movie never bothers to justify or even fully explain. It's hard to cheer on an annoying jerk whose misery is largely of his own making when the story never realizes or acknowledges that fact. Instead of being a man led astray who comes to see the error of his ways, Terell is nothing but a brat who abandons his cause when he ceases to be the center of attention.
This is also one of those films where the audience is never supposed to question how things happen or why certain things don't happen. For example, how Terell is able to kidnap people and avoid getting caught by the FBI is never broached or clarified. I 'm not talking about suspension of disbelief. I'm talking about lazy storytelling where the audience is expected to lap up whatever gruel the filmmaker dishes out to them.
Melissa Leo as Terell's mother and William Sadler as a kidnapped U.S. Senator are good and the rest of the cast never embarrasses themselves. The direction is pedestrian and best and the script is too often more like the bullet points of a story instead of a fully written screenplay.
In the end, Confess isn't an utter disaster because those can be somewhat entertaining. It's fatuous, inapt, listless and too long, even though it lasts only 90 minutes. And no, it is rated R but Ali Larter does not get naked in it.
Terell Lessor (Eugene Byrd) is a former computer hacker who, for never explained reasons, returns to New York City after being away for years. Fueled by repressed resentment for his mother (Melissa Leo) and festering anger at a world he feels has treated him unfairly, Terell turns himself into a video vigilante. He begins videotaping people without their knowledge, editing the footage into a compromising form and then posting it to a website as a "confession" of who the people really are. He catches a middle class father masturbating to computer porn, a business executive pressuring his secretary into sex and a venture capitalist that Terell provokes into an angry outburst.
These videos become an internet sensation, which is the most believable part of the story because far dumber things have caught on with the web-going public, and that leads to Terell hooking up with radical college student Olivia Averill (Ali Larter) who pushes Terell to more extreme and symbolic actions. Terell starts kidnapping people and forcing them to "confess" on camera, which leads to him hiding out from the FBI in Olivia's apartment.
As Olivia pushes Terell and the growing sentiment inspired by him in more violent and destructive ways, Terell gets sick and tired of the whole thing and turns himself in to the authorities, but only after cutting a deal for no jail time. This catapults Terell from internet icon to pop culture juggernaut, until he gets sick and tired of that and fakes his own death. The end.
As you can tell, Confess starts out with a decent premise but never figures out where to go with it. It just pulls the plug on its Howard Beale-esque tale of a man lashing out at society and the unexpected ripples he produces and goes off on an unfocused tangent about the commodification of celebrity that springs out of nowhere. The beginning and the middle of the story have a little in common, but neither has a thing to do with the end. It's like writer/director Stefan C Schaefer decided to take the movie in an unexpected direction and was unconcerned with how little structural or thematic sense it made.
Worse than the plot, however, is the supposed hero of the film. I would guess that Terell Lessor is supposed to the average person who's been screwed by the system. What he is, though, is a whiny, self-centered, arrogant loser with adolescent grievances the movie never bothers to justify or even fully explain. It's hard to cheer on an annoying jerk whose misery is largely of his own making when the story never realizes or acknowledges that fact. Instead of being a man led astray who comes to see the error of his ways, Terell is nothing but a brat who abandons his cause when he ceases to be the center of attention.
This is also one of those films where the audience is never supposed to question how things happen or why certain things don't happen. For example, how Terell is able to kidnap people and avoid getting caught by the FBI is never broached or clarified. I 'm not talking about suspension of disbelief. I'm talking about lazy storytelling where the audience is expected to lap up whatever gruel the filmmaker dishes out to them.
Melissa Leo as Terell's mother and William Sadler as a kidnapped U.S. Senator are good and the rest of the cast never embarrasses themselves. The direction is pedestrian and best and the script is too often more like the bullet points of a story instead of a fully written screenplay.
In the end, Confess isn't an utter disaster because those can be somewhat entertaining. It's fatuous, inapt, listless and too long, even though it lasts only 90 minutes. And no, it is rated R but Ali Larter does not get naked in it.
