PLOT: In December of 1987, Detective Frank Morley of the Bureau of Corrections ventures into an old, isolated prison to find out why a co-worker died while investigating the disappearance of an inmate.
REVIEW: Directed by Will Wernick from a script by Jason Rosen, the mystery thriller Time of Death has a throwback vibe that drew me in from the start. Although set in December of 1987, it doesn’t hit you over the head with that fact. This isn’t the sort of ‘80s-set project that’s filled with bright colors or toe-tapping music tracks. Instead, it feels like something that was directly lifted out of the time it’s set in. I was a kid in ‘87, and this felt like the sort of movie I would have seen my father watching on primetime cable back then.
It’s also interesting in that it doesn’t seem to have made any compromises in an effort to draw in a wider (or younger) audience. It has a strong cast, but it consists largely of that-guy character actors who are usually given supporting roles, including lead actor Michael Kelly, who has over 70 screen acting credits to his name, having had supporting roles in the likes of Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead, The Sopranos, Man of Steel, House of Cards, Lioness, The Penguin, Jack Ryan, etc. Kelly takes center stage here, playing Detective Frank Morley of the Bureau of Corrections, a man with a dark, painful history who sets out on an investigation in a place that has a dark, painful history of its own.
That place is the Seneca Ridge Penitentiary, an isolated prison that has been standing since the Civil War. It’s an old-fashioned place that still uses iron locks and keys. A fire took out one of the blocks back in ‘74, and there hasn’t been an execution there since a particularly messy incident in ‘78. When an inmate goes missing, Morley passes the investigation over to a younger, less experienced co-worker. And when that co-worker has a meltdown over what he’s discovering and then turns up dead, Morley takes over the investigation himself. And that’s when things get weird.
Time of Death straddles a line between genres, often leaning into horror but never going too far in that direction. Seneca Ridge seems to be haunted to a degree and the water that flows through its pipes looks like blood (the coloring is blamed on algae), but it’s mainly Morley who’s affected by the “ghosts” lingering around the property. He’s a haunted man before he even arrives at the prison, plagued by nightmares and guilt associated with the deaths of his wife and child two years earlier, and he becomes much more haunted once he’s at Seneca Ridge. If not for the fact that he starts seeing visions of what happened in this prison years ago, he might never be able to solve the mystery he’s investigating. But are they visions, or just hallucinations caused by his mixture of alcohol and anxiety meds?
Kelly’s co-stars include Kevin Pollak as the country-fried Warden Beau LaRue (a third-generation Warden at Seneca Ridge), Dennis Haysbert as helpful guard Dale Aarons (the most likeable character in the film), Noel Gugliemi as the Warden’s assistant (and yes, he’s playing a character named Hector again!), and Mena Suvari as a doctor co-worker that Morley is in a sort-of relationship with. David Ury, Jeff Kober, Alex Solowitz, Sir Brodie, and Trevor Morgan also have some intriguing moments along the way.
I wasn’t always entirely sure what was going on in Time of Death, as the film blurs reality, nightmares, visions, and flashbacks, but all it comes together in the end, and I was engaged every step of the way.
If you’re interested in watching a dark, grown-up throwback movie with a lot of mystery and a bit of thrills, check out Time of Death. It might even occasionally make you feel like you’ve been transported back in time.
Time of Death is in select theatres and available on PVOD as of today, June 12th.
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