What would you call a guy who kills his wife and her lover and then skins them, dries it out and paints works of art on it?  Pretty nuts huh?  Well that's what the courts though when they sentenced him to life in prison.  The judge who sentenced him even adopted the guy's daughter and tried to raise her up right and give her a normal life since she was too young at the time to know about anything that was going on.

Well years have passed now, and the adopted daughter is all grown up, out of college and about to start a new career in the D.A.'s office.  She's also got a fiance and everything looks like it's going to work out great for her.  That is, until her insane father broke out of prison while the whole family was having a big get together at the judge's house.  Now with the parents called away, the rest of the party is left at the house frightened for their lives as the insane artist killer comes looking for revenge, and for a reunion with his daughter.  But what kind of a reunion was it?  You'll have to watch to find out.

This film has four former Rogue Cinema sleepover girls in it.  One in a small part, one in a bit part, and two in major roles.  The first one we see is Rachel Grubb as the killer's wife that he murders at the beginning of the film.  It was only a small part and I really wish I could have seen more of her in this film.  I always enjoy Rachel's work and she always does a great job with any role she's in.  The bit part was played by Scarlet Salem, who I have the utmost respect for because she's carved out a phenomenal career for herself in indie films and always does a wonderful job in anything she touches.  In this film, she just had a bit part though where she was asked her opinion on whether the killer should get the death penalty.  The two who had bigger roles were Nicole Blessing as the sister and Shannon McDonough as the girl who hooked up with the adopted daughter's ex boyfriend.  Both were great in this film and I was really happy to see all of them.

With regards to acting, something weird happened in this film that I've never really seen happen before in all my years of reviewing.  At least, I don't think I have.  From the time the main body of the story in this film started...at the reunion, to the events at the end of the film, several of the actors actually got better.  They started out ranging from bad to pretty awkward, and by the end of the film had raised their acting skills to a level that was just awesome.  The most notable of which was the killer's daughter Rebecca, played by Jessica S. Lange.  The transformation from how she was in the awkward party scenes at the beginning of the movie to her smoking hot and flawless performance at the end of the film where she ended up in a knife fight with her sister Liz (Nicole Blessing) was just amazing.  Even Nicole Blessing, who was already good, really stepped it up in that part of the movie.  It was very intense and really awesome to see.

Speaking of fight scenes, I just want to say for the record, this film has some of the best choreographed and executed fight scenes I've come across in an independent film.  The quality of the action is phenomenal and the speed with which it's executed is really spectacular.  This was in large part due to the skills of not only Nicole Blessing and Jessica Lange, who I've already talked about, but also because of Jarrod Crooks who played Scott, Rebecca's ex-boyfriend, and Phil Berbig who played Rebecca's serial killer father.  Those two...man!  They beat the snot out of each other, and then beat more snot out of each other, and then some boogers too!  God they went at it and the action was great!

As for the movie as a whole, there were some major problems, and a few minor ones.  I'm only going to mention the major problem I had with this film here, which was the whole beginning of it from after the guy kills his wife and her lover until he shows up at the party and starts killing people again.  So basically, the whole section with the party.  It was boring, it was awkward, some of the acting was really horrible and much of it could have been cut out to shorten the film a bit.  One section that could have been cut was a whole section of them drunkenly riding around on a sled pulled by a 4x4 basically "grass skiing".  That scene went on way too long and had no relationship to anything else in the movie.  I'm still wondering why it was included in the final edit.  The whole section of the movie I'm talking about here probably encompasses about a third of the movie, all in one big chunk. I'm not sure how much it was really, but that's what it felt like.  I would have liked to have seen that section of the movie cut down a LOT, because there really wasn't all that much happening that was important to the story.

Technically, the film was well done.  I've already talked about the action being phenomenal, which it was.  The lighting was good, the cinematography was well done and the editing was done well technically, but some better choices could have been made about what to leave in the film and what to take out of it.  The sound was generally good and I had no trouble understanding the dialogue and following everything that was going on.  Something else that really impressed me was the car crashes with the police vehicles.  Kudos for pulling that off and making it look so great!

Director Rick McCloud has presented us with a movie that, while boring in the slow party scenes, doesn't fail to entertain when it comes right down to the real guts of the film.  Despite it's problems, Unholy Reunion is definitely worth checking out.

If you'd like to find out more about this film, you can check out the film's MySpace page at http://www.myspace.com/unholyreunionmovie.