Offseason Review

PLOT: A woman travels to a supposedly cursed island when she receives word that her mother’s grave there has been vandalized. She quickly finds out the truth about that curse.

REVIEW: Writer/director Mickey Keating is building a fascinating career for himself, having made several original, low budget genre movies that have paired intriguing concepts with some terrific visuals. The latest addition to his filmography is Offseason, which is his best looking movie yet. But while the trailer seemed to indicate this would also be his biggest movie to date, the story is actually very small and contained – and if you’ve seen Keating’s previous movies, you already know what to expect from this one. If the other films on his résumé have been just what you were looking for, this one will be as well. If you found them lacking, you’ll feel the same about Offseason.

Although I follow Keating’s career and have watched everything he has made, I’m not always enamored with his movies as a whole. The core ideas are interesting, but the execution of these ideas aren’t always thrilling. Keating movies tend to be slow-burns that don’t have much happening in them – Ritual and Pod primarily consisted of people talking, Darling had a lot of one person wandering around in one location – and don’t have the most satisfying pay-offs. They tend to be rather short, which is a bonus, but several of them have lost me before the end of their short running times.

With a running time of 83 minutes, Offseason tells the story of Marie (Jocelin Donahue), who receives the distressing notification that her mother’s grave has been vandalized. Her mom was buried on a small island, a fact which is confusing to Marie to begin with because her mom had told her that this place was cursed; the early settlers had made a deal with a sea-dwelling demon. But when her mom died, her will specified that she be buried on the island. Now Marie has to go there with her less-than-ideal boyfriend George (Joe Swanberg) to see what’s going on with the grave.

This being a horror movie, we’ll come to find out that the “deal with a demon” story was true, and Marie will have a very bad and frightening experience on the island because of it. That’s a good set-up, but I found the way it all played out to be underwhelming. As soon as Marie gets onto the island – after the Bridge Man (Richard Brake) tries to turn her and George away because the island is “closed until spring” – we spend most of the movie watching Marie wander around different places on the island. These scenes are atmospheric and look great, but it’s still just someone wandering for minutes at a time.

Keating assembled a strong cast for the movie, with Marie’s late mother Ava being played in flashbacks by Melora Walters. Magnolia is one of my favorite movies because it manages to tear my heart apart every time I watch it, and a large part of that movie’s effectiveness is due to Walters’ performance as her character. She’s great in the moments she has in Offseason as well, my favorite moment being the opening scene where she monologues directly into the camera for a couple minutes.

Aside from the acting, the film’s greatest asset is the cinematography by Mac Fisken. Keating and Fisken basically got started out together, Fisken has shot every one of Keating’s movies, and he has always been able to capture some stunning imagery. Offseason looks great, the cinematography is worthy of a wide theatrical release. I was just left wishing there was more going on while we were looking at this imagery.

Offseason is getting a theatrical, digital, and On Demand release courtesy of RLJE Films on March 11th, but the more fitting release will be when it reaches the Shudder streaming service later in the year. There’s so much of Marie wandering around, this is a movie that works better as something you just click play on while browsing through a streaming service instead of something you go out of your way to watch.

Offseason

BELOW AVERAGE

5