It’s Halloween time again, when good little ghosts and goblins revel in pretend-scaring themselves and their friends.  Lately, the holiday has returned more closely to its roots, when adults celebrate with a furor and don costumes that poke fun at the things that frighten them the most (witness the popularity of Bernie Madoff masks this year).

    So it’s natural that scary movies come out to play in late fall.  But if you’re looking for true horror on film in the spirit of the season, I suggest you skip Saw VI or whatever slasher film du jour is playing at the local multiplex – and find a way to see The Fall.  It’s sick, it’s twisted, and it’s devastating in its exploration of how fear, greed, power and brutality touches two brothers. (see trailer)

    Tony Jakubiak (Benny Ciaramello) is a recovering heroin addict who’s recently begun putting his life back together.  Older brother Frank (Scott Kinworthy) is a judge who looks like he could be Wisconsin’s next governor.  But their lives spin completely out of control when Tony is in the wrong place at the wrong time and gets arrested for viciously killing a priest.

    Tony didn’t do it, but he refuses to provide an alibi to prove his innocence.  Convinced his brother is blameless, Frank steps down from the bench to act as his brother’s defense attorney.  But he’s repeatedly frustrated by Tony’s refusal to cough up his whereabouts: Frank’s certain Tony was doing unmentionable things with another priest, Fr. Herman, at the time of the murder.  Big brother wants Tony to spill and stop protecting Fr. Herman so little brother can walk.

    It’s not the duo’s first brush with murder, though.  We learn from flashback scenes that Frank and Tony apparently beat a playmate to death when they were children and managed to successfully cover it up.  Fr. Hermann knows something about it, too.  Tony battles massive guilt as the one who delivered the blows on his brother’s instructions; is he trying to take the fall to atone for his past sins? 

    There’s also some odd tension going on between Tony and his sister-in-law, Frank’s wife Brooke (Erica Shaffer).  The two are openly hostile to each other – Brooke sees Tony potentially ruining her plans to get her husband to the governor’s mansion.  Or does she?  Uptight Brooke befriends Tony’s rough-edged, disfigured fiancée Mary Beth (Erica Hoag), and there’s something not-quite-right about Brooke’s intentions as the two play beauty parlor in her bathroom.

    His family floating away and facing life in prison, Tony befriends his neighbor in protective custody, Eric Masters (Peter Cilella).  Eric’s a parricidal maniac who suffers from AIDS and regularly injures himself to gain a trip to the infirmary and access to drugs, and dispenses philosophy along with marijuana to Tony.  “I think God gives us the rope, and we do all the rest,” he tells Tony about the human propensity to screw things up.

    Rope is a repeated image throughout the film: it’s a symbol of relief when Eric dangles joints into Tony’s cell from a rope, and an instrument of death for a later hanging.  Writer, director and executive producer John Krueger likes to keep the audience hanging, too, as he doles out the dark stuff slowly in this unrated film.  Cinematographer Marco Capetta’s muted lighting underlines the sinister tone of the film, and Richard and Max Druz’s score punctuates the characters’ simmering disturbia.

    While the plot entices, some of its elements could use fine-tuning.  In his other life, Krueger directs commercials, and perhaps with the lengthier feature he lost sight of some details.  Judge Stanley Seeban (William Devane) isn’t persuasive as a blind, fatherly judge, but the fault seems to lie with the script.  In fact, all the courtroom scenes were completely unbelievable – if I sat in a criminal courtroom like that for five minutes during my years as a crime reporter, I would have begged my editors to give me over-the-fold space to spotlight the grossly unprofessional behavior on display.  A prosecuting attorney bolstering the accused’s defense?  Gimme a break.

    Kinworthy’s solid as the young politician on the move, but he’s best after his character discovers who Tony was really with the night of the murder and starts to lose his shit.  Shaffer is stellar as the warped political wife with a perverse agenda; her iniquity will terrify.  Cilella shines as Eric, and Hoag does vulnerable well.

    Ciaramello is profound as the tragic Tony – you will cringe for this character.  I have one complaint, however: as Tony, he’s too hot.  While nice eye candy for the audience, no recently recovered heroin addict is going to have Ciaramello’s healthy build and heavily defined musculature.  It was jarring.  There’s some wooden acting by minor cast members that tends to distract, too.

    But as a psychological thriller, this film will satisfy: There’s plenty to flinch at here.  Juries at both the Indie Spirit festival and the Rome Film Festival voted it Best Feature.  Amp up the monstrosity of The Player, take out the irony, stir in some extra violence, add more evil and drop it into Milwaukee, and you’d be on the right track.  Man’s inhumanity to man apparently never goes out of style. ★★★½☆☆ --  Joannè von Alroth

    The Fall opens in Los Angeles today (Oct. 30).

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