Natalie's Lose Lose (2012) Directed by Eric Williford

At first I feared this was going to turn into yet another one of those low budget "Saw" wannabees (though the 'villain's' voice definitely still sounded very Saw-ish) but fortunately as it turned out, the movie was being a quite different and creative one with its concept.

I have seen a lot of low budget movies that are set in one confined location, such as this one but none of them are ever really that creative or gutsy with its concept. They more or less are all doing the same thing, making them predictable and far from the most exciting ones, once you have seen a few too many of them already. Thing that this movie does well though is build up and handle all of its tension and mystery, by never revealing too much and by keeping you mostly in the dark about things. You don't even really know how you should feel about its main character, played by Danielle Adams. You don't know why she's there and you don't know anything about her neither, since you never get to see her outside of the 'torture room'. You therefore also don't know whether she is guilty or not, of the crimes she is accused of participating in.

I said torture room but that really was because of a lack of better words. Don't worry, this is not one of those 'torture porn' movies, in which the main character has to endure the most horrific and painful things, while getting tortured in the most gruesome ways. Sure, there's some violence and gore but it never becomes the main focus of the movie. It's more creative with its story and storytelling really, which also helps to make this a refreshing and good movie to watch, within its genre.

You can tell that at points they were still struggling with its story though. Not necessarily the story in itself but more the length of it. The movie feels stretched out moments but the good news is that it isn't ever really starting to repeat itself after a while, which is a real accomplishment for a movie that's set entirely in the same room for its duration, with only the same handful of people constantly featured in it. Still some scenes feel too improvised and random and sometimes just go on for too long. Not with minutes but seconds, which may sound like a small issue but when it happens time and time again, it does in fact becomes a small annoyance. It needlessly slows the movie down at parts and takes away some of the intensity and tension of it.

But really, especially when considering its budget (which I assume was very low), this movie is a perfectly fine, good looking, as well as also original and engaging one to watch. Definitely worth checking out for the lovers of indie-horror.

7/10

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