The tone is everything – even if your ambitions are relegated to making a low-budget crime thriller that works on over-the-top thrills. Jeffrey Obrow’s “Pursued” is one of those that does not understand what tone to stick to. It at once feels like a teen high-school movie, a look at what grief does to you, a messy vigilante thriller, and a serial killer movie that follows the most pronounced killer you will see this side of a Lifetime production.
The film begins with Lark (Madison Lawlor), a 17-year-old who is grounded by her father because she wants to go to a party at a late hour, swayed by a boy named Kris (Joel Courtney) that she likes. Of course, she defies his wishes and sneaks out, prompting him to go after her, only to be met by a fatal accident that kills him. Cut to two years later, Lark is now dating and seriously committed to Kris, while her mother, Carol (Molly Ringwald), is slowly trying to get out of her grief by meeting new men.
The tonal whiplash from the prologue to the film’s actual beginning is odd because it then establishes that Kris and Lark have a fallout. After all, she sees him making out with another girl because he is now a popular MMA fighter. The second tonal shift occurs right there as the teenage angst is withheld for a not-so-apparent look at Lark’s interest in fighting for the right causes. The only connective thread to this is stitched together with her grief, which makes little sense if you think about it. Later, she briefly meets Drea (played by MMA fighter Miesha Tate), Kris’s trainer, whose association with Lark is established with a single line of dialogue that does nothing more than make the plot’s progression even more implausible.
When Lark gets to know that her mother is dating a new man named Mark Franc, her brain automatically goes into research mode, eventually leading her to an online dating portal where a man who is also named Mark Franc has been slurring abuses towards a woman named Sarah (Alice Ziolkoski). Digging further into the case, Lark discovers that Sarah is possibly dead and Mark Frac might be extremly dangerous. So, unlike any logical person who would straightaway go to the police, Lark decides to team up with her nice but easily manipulated best friend, Nicole (Taylor Blackwell), and her teacher Jack (Sam Trammell), who, very conveniently, has a history of lock-picking among other stuff.
Now, like any other B-movie, this serial killer narrative should work in a by-the-numbers fashion. It also has an unhinged, over-the-top performance by Angus Macfadyen, who plays the killer. But, everything in “Persued” is peppered with tonally inconsistent, implausible, and poorly staged sequences. Exhibit the sequence where the two girls randomly find themselves in the middle of a sex club – nothing about the scene makes a single bit of sense, and it is unable to evoke any thrill that moves the plot forward. The direction and writing are rigged with poor character motifs, making some of the film’s twists and turns laughable.
The only good piece of performance that you get out of the film is that of Sam Trammell, who makes the odd choice made by his character somewhat believable. Everyone else, including Madison Lawlor, ranges from bad to worse, with Macfayden’s obvious turn taking the cake. The Late Paul Sorvino also features in two poorly lit scenes, and while it is always good to see him, the feeling of him and his co-stars in the scene being shot separately makes them feel odd and out of place.
Overall, “Pursued” is not worth checking out, even if you like thrashy Lifetime-level movies. It does not have the gravity or thrill to make you sit up and notice.
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