‘Persona’ VOD Review
Stars: Shanti Lowry, Sophia Ali, Andrew Howard | Written by Blyth Kemp | Directed by Mike Ho
Persona managed to give me a shock before I even started watching it. Its IMDB entry lists it as running two hours and twenty-one minutes, which seemed a bit excessive for the film’s plot. Thankfully, when I put it on, the actual running time was a more reasonable hour and forty-two minutes, and even that was a bit longer than needed.
A woman (Shanti Lowry; Bolden, Momma Said Come Home for Christmas) wakes up with no memory of who or where she is. Where is a filthy house, one that looks like it’s been used as a squat for the homeless. Actually, it’s serving a much more sinister purpose, its doors locked and windows boarded up, it’s serving as a prison for her.
On the TV, the news is reporting another woman is missing, abducted from a nearby mall. Could she be the woman they’re talking about? Actually, that would be Sam (Sophia Ali; Uncharted, Bad Kids of Crestview Academy) whom The Woman finds in a hidden room tied to a chair and bleeding from a nasty looking cut.
The women would appear to be the victims of a serial killer, but why were they chosen, and why are they still alive? More importantly, can they stop arguing and trust each other long enough to find a way out before their captor returns?
Most of director Mike Ho’s credits, and there are a lot of them, are for directing music videos for artists like Toni Braxton, Lil Wayne and Megan Thee Stallion. He does, however, have one previous feature to his name, Imani, a thriller that also deals with missing memories and questions of identity. He’s working from a script by Blyth Kemp, for whom this is their first feature after some shorts and TV work.
While Ho and Kemp do establish some feelings of suspense and dread in the first part of Persona, much of it is wasted on squabbling between a pair of equally unlikable women. That and pointless ideas like a plan to tunnel their way out of the house, which lasts for a couple of minutes until one of them suddenly gets claustrophobia. Much of this, especially the repetitive shouting matches, could have been trimmed, improving the pace and lowering the annoyance factor considerably.
Persona is much more effective when characters are having flashbacks that may or may not be accurate, one of them is having the occasional hallucination, and trying to make us question trusting one or both of the women. That and the occasional jump scare, frequently helped along by Jeremy Wiebe’s score, managed to keep me following along until things finally start to pick up in the last forty minutes.
That’s when Ray (Andrew Howard; Hard Home, True Memoirs of an International Assassin) shows up and we finally get some answers. Or do we? By this point, it’s obvious that what we’re getting is the memories of some very unstable people. But it does provide for a satisfying finale. Give or take a final cliché that really needs to die.
While it features three solid performances and ends on a strong note, Persona is a very uneven film. The first half has too many dull spots that, combined with shrill and unlikable characters, make it hard to stay invested in their story until we get a better bearing on them. Whether or not the final act makes it worth sitting through is a bit of a judgment call. Overall, my final feelings are that it’s OK, it’s probably worth a rental if the price isn’t too high.
** 2/5
Gravitas Ventures released Persona to Digital and VOD Platforms yesterday, December 3rd.
______
