Fall Down Dead(2007).In a big American city, the serial killer The Picasso Killer is terrorizing the dwellers and the police department does not have lead to find him. The bartender Christie Wallace dreams on moving to the countryside with her six year-old daughter Zoe to have a peaceful life far from the violence of the city. Late night of Christmas Eve, Christie leaves the Tides Bar where she works and walks back home. In an alley, she sees a woman dying covered on blood and The Picasso Killer sees Christie and chases her. She runs to a commercial building where the night watchman Wade is reluctant to open the door and does not give credit to Christie. She calls the police and Detectives Stefan Kerchek and Lawrence Kellog attend the call. When Christie tells that she can recognize the infamous serial-killer, there is a blackout, the phones are dead and the detectives cannot call the precinct. They lock the building waiting for reinforcement but sooner they find that The Picasso Killer has broken in the ... Written byClaudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil... Synopsis Fall Down Dead(2007)
Movie Title: Fall Down Dead(2007)
Run Time: 93 min
Rating: 3.9 / 10
Genres: Horror
Release Date: 18 December 2009 (USA)
Director: Jon Keeyes
Writer: Roy Sallows... and other credits
Actor: Mihaela Radulescu,Udo Kier,Huyen Thi
Fall Down Dead (2007)
* 1/2 (out of 4)
Silly horror film about a young woman (Dominique Swain) who witnesses The Picasso Killer (Udo Kier) who has been stalking the city. She's able to get away and call police but there's a rolling blackout sweeping the city so she must stay inside a locked building with a group of other people and of course the killer gets in trying to get rid of them all. FALL DOWN DEAD is yet another in a seemingly endless string of slasher pictures where you get the feeling of deja vu from start to finish. I will say that director Jon Keeyes manages to make the film look very professional and I thought he handled the opening sequence quite well but when you're dealing with a routine screenplay that gives you everything you'd expect and in the order that you'd expect it, there's really nothing anyone could do. The screenplay pretty much goes from A to Z just like you'd expect it to. You know who's going to live. You know who's going to die. You know various twists that's going to happen in the story. You know pretty much everything including how a victim is going to escape the killer and reach her car only to have it not start. It's really too bad that the screenplay goes for the routine and cliché moments from start to finish because I think a rewrite could have made for a better result. Another problem is the story itself, which never really makes too much sense. The police inside this building want to protect the Swain character because she can identify the killer. However, instead of leaving the building and taking her somewhere they decide to just wait around inside the building with the killer instead of leaving and getting her to safety. The excuse given is that the cops want to call a police squad in but after the first two or three people get slaughtered it looks like they'd just leave. Another annoying thing is various scenes that just make you want to jump through the screen and punch the characters. Everyone is fighting for their lives yet it seems each one of them has time to stop what they're doing, talk about marriage, their past and their plans for the future. These moments are just so annoying that you really wonder why no one in the production stood up and asked what was going on. Performances are decent at best with Swain certainly doing the best work here. Kier is also effective in his part as that great voice does wonders. David Carradine appears in one of his many 15-minute cameos that he got after KILL BILL. Even he is featured in a rather stupid sequence where Swain in banging on the office door and screaming for her life. They have her playing terror, the music is that pure thriller mode and yet they have Carradine playing the scene for laughs. It just doesn't add up but then again not much does in this film.
