‘A Grim Becoming’ Review
Stars: Brandyn T. Williams, Bill Oberst Jr., Jessica Cameron, Devanny Pinn, Lynn Lowry, Melantha Blackthorne, Kevin Tanski, Britt Griffith, Rich Lounello, Mike Sarcinelli, Sherri Lyn Litz, Samantha Hoy, Michael Sciabarrasi | Written by Adam R. Steigert, Janeen Avery, Christopher Brechtel, Mark Mendola , T.R. Smith | Directed by Adam R. Steigert
Raphael is a young executive on the verge of losing a multimillion dollar architectural deal with a large distribution company. Raphael suffers a sudden death in his family and has to immediately leave to go to the funeral in his home town of Metzburgh. As he returns to Metzburgh, he experiences a life changing event: witnessing a Grim Reaper taking a soul. This sighting results in Raphael becoming a Reaper and having to explore his own conscience and the lengths he will go to get his own life back. But Death, has other plans for the naive young executive.
As soon as A Grim Becoming starts you can tell what kind of tone the film makers were going for. In a word? Super-epic-cheesy. Now I’m a fan of cheesy Halloween films as much as the next guy but there is a level of cheese which is too far even for my simple brain and this film strides proudly into it. I just couldn’t cope with the jokes and silliness that A Grim Becoming was trying amuse me with. Raphael naked, horny old couples and strange relatives doing stupid things got old extremely fast. Even Death himself was shown as a cigar smoking, top hat wearing man whose catch phrase was to say ‘Oh myy!’ in true Takei-esqe fashion and referred to himself as ‘Mr. Magoo’. For two hours I was bombarded with this strange and horrifying tale, and it wasn’t even horrifying for the right reasons. I was just horrified at their attempts at humour.
The ‘Death’ mythos and Grim Reapers are subject matters which I have always found to be awesome. This film could have gone in so many cool directions, even as a comedy, but sadly it didn’t live up to any of my expectations. Even if it wasn’t for the childish jokes, there are technical issues as well which destroy any redeeming qualities that this film might have had. I am going to put this into writing right now, so any film makers reading, please pay attention, Music in film is good. Music in films which is louder than the dialogue is not good. In fact it is terrible. If I have to guess what your characters are saying, which happened a lot in A Grim Becoming, I’m going to turn the film off and walk away. If you don’t know what is going on, you can’t connect with the story, you can’t empathise with the characters and it just all becomes an incomprehensible mess.
Alright, rant over. Actually no, no it isn’t. A Grim Becoming, if you are going to make references to a girl trying to commit suicide in one scene and then have two people sexually feeding each other peanut butter in another scene and neither are absolutely essential to the plot of the film, you have lost all my respect as a film viewer.
Okay, stopping now. Long story short, don’t waste time with this film.