Deadline is one of the last of Britney Murphy’s movies before her untimely death and since I got hold of the movie I thought I may as well review it.  An interesting note was the DVD I have to review has Murphy laying in the bath looking dead so yeah, that’s kind of creepy (and I know they have changed the artwork now, I must have got a version made before the change).

Murphy plays Alice, a screenwriter who moves into an old spooky house to finish something she is working on.  I’m sure you’ll agree with me that that’s now a typical ghost story movie is it? (Sarcasm).  Hearing spooky sounds around the house she investigates, which results in her finding mini-dv tapes which tells the story of some previous inhabitants of the old house.  As she views the tapes and discovers more about the couple who lived there her sanity seems to decay as the couple’s relationship falls apart, and strangely relate to Alice’s own troubles in her life.

As this is a straight to DVD movie I did not have much hope for the acting ability but it does have a strong cast (or should).  Thora Birch, the wife in the video segments is notable for making the best of what story she has and creates a believable character.  Marc Blucas (Riley from Buffy) who plays the husband in the video segments also plays his character well.  The problem is that the story in the flashback videos is more interesting than what is happening to Alice.  Britney Murphy seems to be lacking something in this movie and that surprises me because in the past she has played good roles.  Girl, Interrupted and Sin City would be examples of two movies where she is far superior to in this movie.  The number of times she was meant to look shocked or scared and all her face could manage was vacant really annoyed me.  As wrong as it feels to complain about her so soon after her death, her acting in this movie was poor and with other factors weakened the rest of the movie really.

This movie is watchable at best.  It tries to be quite inventive by using the mini-dv tapes to sell the ghost story but even with that it becomes far too recognisable as the average typical story.  Even the twist at the end is predictable to anybody as this type of story is over used.  It’s understandable that this was released as straight to DVD as I’m not sure I’d want to pay to go see it or even buy the DVD (I rented it).  Looking for positives in this movie I think I would pick out Thora Birch’s acting and the setting.  Although there was a failure to make the movie feel creepy the house still had a feeling of feeling empty and lonely (even if it was far from lonely).  It’s just a shame that the story and acting in general could not make better use of what was given to them.  For Murphy I’d rather remember her in Girl, Interrupted which I think is one of her better roles.  If I had to pick a horror movie to remember her by it would Cherry Falls which was a surprisingly entertaining movie.

rating 4/10