March 19, 2019

ACCIDENT is Aptly Named
Starring Stephanie Schildknecht, Roxanne Hayward, Tyrone Keogh, Keenan Arrison, Karl Thaning. Directed by Dan Tondowski. (2017/92 min). 

On Blu-ray from WELL GO USA

Review by Tiger the Terrible😾

Accident has a great premise and one good scene. That's it. The title could cheekily refer to how clumsily the film was thrown together.

Jess and Caroline are two dumb bimbos hitching a ride to a concert with a couple of even dumber dudes, Fred and Thomas, who "borrowed" a sports car for the weekend. Unfortunately, they have an accident and get trapped in the overturned vehicle at the bottom of a ravine. Making matters worse...those who actually own the car are gangsters who've stashed something extremely valuable inside, and they want it back.

The aforementioned one good scene is the crash itself, filmed from inside the vehicle. It hits another car before rolling end-over-end down a steep wooded hill. In loving slow-motion, we see passengers bouncing around inside among debris and shattered windshield glass.

It comes to rest - upside-down - near the edge of a cliff. However, in what might be the worst continuity error of all time, three of the four passengers are trapped inside, unable to break through the windows that shattered only one scene earlier. Miraculously, Fred was apparently thrown out on the way down. Through what, an air vent? Dumber still, Thomas eventually manages to force a window open and shimmy his way out, yet despite being unrestrained, Jess and Caroline remain helplessly trapped inside the car. It never occurs to either of them to simply follow his lead.

The boys find a ladybug.
Never mind the uniformly terrible performances and aggressively stupid characters. First-time writer/director Dan Tondowski is his own worst enemy, patching together his story with bone-headed logic and little regard to anything resembling plausibility. Consider this:
  • Fred must have the healing powers of Wolverine. He's impaled right through the chest by a tree limb, yet after good buddy Thomas pulls it out, he's right as rain within a few minutes. Later, he's taken down by multiple rounds from a mounted machine gun, only to bounce back yet-again to rescue a girl from drowning.
  • Though I'm no triage expert, I'm pretty certain you can't stop an asthma attack by performing an emergency tracheotomy. But even you could, it's highly doubtful the recipient could do much more than gurgle blood, let alone speak and scream.
  • What is a street light doing in the middle of the forest?
  • Jess and Caroline change clothes in a truck stop restroom, pausing at-length to strut around in their panties, engaging in small talk while Tondowski's camera engages in their asses. Most of us would prefer to avoid truck stop restroom altogether, to say nothing of performing a gratuitous striptease in one.
  • Once he's out of the car, Tony wants to leave the girls behind. Then he wants to burn them alive in the car with a road flare. Fred talks him out of it for the moment, but Tony later decides they should die after all. So he pulls out a gun to shoot them, but again, Fred convinces him not to. Finally, Tony flip-flops one more time and once-again chooses death by fire. But this time, Fred simply sits down next to Tony and watches flames surround the car. Hey, make up your minds, guys.
  • After locating the car, a mob assassin arrives at the scene and kills a highway patrolman after he's radioed for back-up, though he doesn't appear concerned about it. Neither does Tondowski, since the threat of back-up never figures into the story.
I could go on, but you get the idea. It's as though every scene was written on-the-fly without referring to the script's previous pages to make sure it doesn't contradict what's already happened. Accident is almost completely devoid of narrative logic, plausibility, pacing and continuity. Which is a shame because it's technically competent and the basic concept is solid. Instead, what could have been a tense, tight little thriller ends up being a mind-numbing assault on the viewer's intelligence. At best, this is good for a few incredulous chuckles at its own expense.


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