‘The Vindicator’ VOD Review
Stars: David W Rice, MacCallister Byrd, Anna Greene, Dez Cuchiara, Adrianna Licitra, Chris Maher, Sean Berube, Cameron Duckett, Jasmine Berber, Chelsea Claire, Josh Deener | Written by Cameron Duckett, Luca Patruno | Directed by Luca Patruno, Brandon Sherrill
I can only assume that stories like the one portrayed in The Vindicator will only get more and more popular. In fact, they already are, as they played a pretty big part in kick-starting the latest Halloween movie trilogy. The kind of stories I’m talking about are ones centred on true crime podcasters. In The Vindicator, a trio of podcasters are investigating the ‘The Vindicator’ murderer who apparently murdered over 100 people. The podcast is interrupted though, and the three friends have to play a deadly game, with the ring leader possibly being ‘The Vindicator’ himself.
Right from the beginning, you can see that, in terms of production at least, The Vindicator looks much better than many low-budget horror movies. I watch a lot of low-budget films, so it’s easy to see when one looks much better than the many others out there. On top of the simplicity of the picture looking great, the film is shot really well, the lighting is fantastic – you won’t be squinting your eyes in any darkness here – and the acting, even if a little inexperienced, is decent. These might be simple things, especially if you mainly watch more mainstream cinema, but it’s honestly a breath of fresh air when you watch a lot of cheap genre films.
The story itself and the script aren’t anything special. There are a couple of moments in the script that I wasn’t a huge fan of – I don’t want to say anymore as to spoil the movie – but these moments weren’t anything major, and I couldn’t see them ruining the film for anyone. The obvious influence here is the Saw franchise, more so the first film. And if you were going to be influenced by any of them, the first one is the best choice. In The Vindicator, we have one setting for a big chunk of the movie, and we watch three people listen to and mostly obey the commands of another character who is off-screen and only heard (by the characters and the audience) via a walkie-talkie. The trio are asked questions and has to guess who the instigator is, while at the same time are punished if they get something wrong or lie about something. It’s a simple setup, and we get the expected love triangle unfolding when lies are told.
I would say don’t go in expecting the gore of the Saw sequels, but it does go in a similar direction to that first film, and I was surprised by the brutality of the violence in the last twenty minutes or so.
The three main actors are enjoyable enough. David W Rice, MacCallister Byrd and Anna Greene all have a certain charisma, and the chemistry between the three of them was pretty good. They are all quite inexperienced, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see all three have decent careers.
The Vindicator may not do anything particularly new or exciting, but everything it does, it does well. And for that at least, I feel it’s worth checking out for any genre fan. There’s still not a whole lot of podcast-themed horror, so until that subgenre is saturated, The Vindicator fills that gap nicely with its dose of true crime gore.
*** 3/5
The Vindicator is on digital 19 January from Miracle Media
