Burn movie
One of the things I like a great deal about BURN is how it hews to one location and makes it inherently interesting for the entire runtime. It’s hard to proceed from here without betraying too much of the plot, but suffice it to say, Melinda soon turns the tables on not just Billy, but Sheila as well. When Billy pulls a pistol and demands the safe and registers be emptied, an unpredictable skein of events transpires. As the night wears on and a smattering of customers come through, Melinda and Sheila’s night is upended with the arrival of Billy (Josh Hutcherson), a denim-clad cowboy type looking to lift some cash in order to pay outstanding debts to a biker gang. Sheila teases Melinda for having an unreciprocated crush on Officer Liu (Harry Shum Jr.), a rookie cop on his first night alone on the job. Melinda and Sheila don’t particularly get along, yet are forced to work together throughout their graveyard shift. The kind of behavior we instantly sense is a bit off Melinda likes to make useless small talk to strangers who couldn’t care less, offer pistachio refunds to unenthused shoppers, and in general overstep her boundaries with a sense of sociopathy. Two attendants are on duty, Melinda (Cobham-Hervey), a withdrawn weirdo who enjoys burning her fingers in piping hot coffee, and Sheila (Suki Waterhouse), a bored an unimpressed looker who teases Melinda for her odd behavior. The film opens and stays for its 80-minute duration at Paradise Pumps gas station at nighttime. However, when the entire temperature is taken, BURN is far more tepid than it bills itself as! Indeed, what BURN lacks in rooting interests and terrifying dramatic action it makes up for with Cobham-Hervey’s incendiary work. Unfortunately, without a compelling protagonist to genuinely care for – one who not only knows wrong from right and acts accordingly, but also boasts a magnetic personality as well – all we’re really left to cling to is a tremendous central performance by Cobham-Hervey, who outshines with a rivetingly nuanced turn as a deranged lunatic subsisting on her weird and wicked wits and wiles.
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Instead, we’re given a fairly amusing if oddly confounding look at a simple heist gone horribly awry, and the ways in which Melinda attempts to use her quasi-insane, duplicitous sociopathic tendencies for her own survival.
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Thing is, there aren’t many central characters in the film to begin with, and even less to really side with in hope of truly making it out alive, never mind triumph. Due in select theaters just three weeks later on August 23rd is Gan’s speedy follow-up BURN, an equally mediocre outcome which functions less as a gripping heist thriller and more as a mildly captivating character study of a young woman, Melinda, on the brink of severe psychological slippage.
#Burn movie series
REVIEW: It’s been quite the month for promising new horror filmmaker Mike Gan, whose feature debut film SCHOOL SPIRIT, a middling slasher cross between THE BREAKFAST CLUB and PSYCHO, served as the penultimate episode of Hulu Original’s Into the Dark series in early August.
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PLOT: When the Paradise Pumps gas station is held at gunpoint by a petty thief, a psychologically unhinged clerk named Melinda (Tilda Cobham-Hervey) goes to great lengths of lunacy to ensure her survival.