This opens with some vagueness. A woman in what appears to be some sort of confinement idly chipping away at paint on her bunk. A man drawing schematics and creating some sort of electronic “T” shaped device before putting it in a bag labeled Marla Mae. All this as part of the opening credits.
The movie starts properly though with two waitresses and a bartender counting up and closing for the night. To be honest, they are decent in their acting here. At times they are very stiff and not believable, then they have moments of being pretty good. But it definitely feels like a low budget movie. One of the waitresses is the titular Marla Mae, played by Lisa Van Dam-Bates. Lisa is also the writer and director of this.
She goes home from the bar in a creepy neighborhood walk. But the start of the plot involves her getting an IUD implanted. This is done by a family friend, Doc, who works at a clinic, and done for free. When her ride fails to show, another girl there offers to give her a ride. This scene really should have been longer, because it amounts to the one girl introducing herself as Jules and Marla being kinda bitchy to her and 30 seconds later giving her a ride. Just didn’t feel right. And then the girl asks if Marla can help her get a job.
Marla seems to be in her twenties, but she just looks so tired and jaded to life. The movie was still engaging though, even with a cast of kinda quiet boring people. Especially the bartender Jake. Who is also Marla’s boyfriend. Jake is possibly the worst actor in this with pretty much no emotion at all. Ever. When he and Marla start having sex, it looks like he’s just lying down for a nap. Then when he dies, you can’t even tell a difference! Well, until the camera pulls back and we see that somehow Jake’s entire lower body is just gone. Disintegrated. He dissolved from having sex with Marla! To be honest, Marla really wasn’t very emotional here either. I would have screamed or yelled or at least been like what the fuck…. She was just quiet and asked Jules (who walked in on the bloody scene the same night she moved in with Marla) to call someone and get help. Sure, she was in shock. And I get that. A reasonable response, but it seemed like there should have been something more.
They very much gloss over the aftermath. There should have been more. Some scene. If EMT show up and a dude is half disintegrated… What do they say? What do the cops say? They aren’t just gonna be like “Ok, we are taking the half a Jake and you ladies enjoy the rest of your evening.”
This movie is in the roughly 90 minute typical horror movie length, but I would have loved to see another 30 minutes here. I mentioned two scenes here that could have been expanded on. The aftermath alone could have been an extra 20 minutes.
Jake dies a little before the 30 minute mark. We now travel with Marla as she goes through the quiet withdrawal. Her boyfriend is gone, and she is having trouble doing anything. She is dodging calls from the cops and not going to work and popping seemingly random pills that Jake had picked up. Finally she goes back to work, and in what had to be a script error, the cop she has been avoiding finally catches up to her. And says he wants to talk to her about the murder of Jake. Odd wording. And the sort of thing an expanded scene after his death would have helped with.
Jumping ahead a bit, Marla is attacked on her way home from work, and when the guy rapes her he kinda explodes. Not like that. I mean like his body completely disintegrates and he turns into a puddle. Now the story has me very intrigued. What is going on. It obviously has to do with the IUD she got. Somehow. Jules gets home to find a blood covered Marla. She goes to talk to Doc about taking out the IUD. He refuses and tells her to wait it out.
Her roommate Jules tries to help her. And they figure out that it has to do with the IUD implant. Which leads to them infiltrating his home to find out more.
Visually there was a lot I liked in this. And I like the story overall. This could have been a really good movie. A few scene tweaks I mentioned, and maybe anyone else in the role of Jake. Oddly, I see that he was also in the recent Werewolves movie by Steven C. Miller. A movie I still need to check out. Curious to see how he acts in it. Just recalled something in this. There are several moments where Marla appears to have a flashback, which we then see later as something that happens in the movie. I don’t understand that at all, and think it would have been better without those.
I finished watching this movie with an overall enjoyment of it. And recently I have watched a bunch of really bad ones. But this movie had something going for it. There’s a vibe here of It Follows and Teeth. Two “sex kills” movies in the horror genre. I waver on rating here between 5 and 8. This could easily have been an 8, but then I think of Jakes blah existence in this. That takes it down a notch. And then I think of the scenes that I felt were missing. And I realize there is no way I can rate this as an 8. I honestly think I have to come in at a 6 on it. And looking online, it doesn’t appear as though Lisa is working on anything new as writer or director. Which is a shame. I would like to see a new creative project from her.