Cheap doesn’t have to mean bad. A cheap meal, made with skill and care, can be delicious. A cheap garment, worn with style, can be beautiful. And a cheap movie, crafted with intelligence and infused with talent, can be brilliant. But a movie is no simple feat of construction like a meal or a garment, or even a work of art like a painting or a novel.
It typically requires the input of many, a variety of equipment, and a level of technical ability rarely mastered by a beginner. Movies can be cheap, and cheap movies can be great, but said movies are rare.
Alexianne Charlery-Warner’s D.A.N.C.E. is evidently a cheap movie, and not a rare one – it’s lamentably far from great. A group of four young friends attend a Hallowe’en party at a club, apparently the venue’s final night. It’s also the final night for some of its attendees, as a killer lurks among the revellers.
The movie is a comedy slasher of sorts – neither the comedy nor the horror elements are developed with substantial insight or ingenuity. The killer is simply in the club, indiscriminately murdering people in plain sight without drawing much attention. The club is a sad, functional space, sparsely populated and devoid of atmosphere. And what few hints of narrative purpose are permitted to intrude on plot are too cryptic to acquire much identifiable meaning.
What D.A.N.C.E. has going for it, though, is nerve – maybe too much, as Charlery-Warner’s attempts to condense a feature-worthy slasher plot into a 15-minute short with multiple perspectives and genres doesn’t quite work. But the ambition to achieve all of this is laudable, not least for an aspiring filmmaker at the start of her career.
The dialogue needs some attention, and a more experienced cast would help, but with better resources and a more refined understanding of pacing, Charlery-Warner could iron out many of the little issues in her technique. D.A.N.C.E. may not be a great movie, but its nerve indicates that its director may someday be capable of making one.
