​MURDER MADE EASY

By Joe X Young 

 
A year on from the death of her husband Neil, Joan (Jessica Graham) and her best friend Michael (Christopher Soren Kelly) are marking the anniversary by inviting old friends around for a bite to eat, a chat and a little revenge for their mistreatment of Neil. Assorted characters are introduced and dispatched in a variety of ways. Upon introduction there’s a board showing a menu of what that person will be eating which ties into their personality and the whole thing begins as something initially dry with the first character before becoming flippant with the second, alternating the mood throughout. The dialogue is sharp and witty and I found myself laughing out loud at the antics of the second guest, only 20 minutes into the film and it was already highly enjoyable even though really removed from the norm.

One of the more unusual aspects is that the guests are not all sitting together at a table in an Agatha Christie ’10 Little Indians’ style or indeed a ‘The Last Supper’ weekly dispatching, but are all turning up one at a time on the same night with scarcely a beat between when one person is killed and another one rings the doorbell.

Obviously things don’t actually stay according to plan and there are moments when the dinner-table turns and some housekeeping needs to be done, which I found to be not only highly realistic but massively amusing.

The trailer for this film does what the majority of trailers do in as much as it cherry-picks what is considered to be some of the better parts of the action but in this case the trailer doesn’t do the film justice. It’s a tough call because much of what makes this film so entertaining is character dynamics and not the murders, but the dynamics wouldn’t be quite so enticing than the more gruesome aspects.

Of particular note here are, well, basically the whole cast, as they are all superb so it’s hard to single them out. This really is Jessica Graham’s film though as she’s the most involved character and perfect in all aspects.

There’s a little something extra to this film and I won’t dare to tell you what it is but it has to be one of the most well thought out endings I’ve ever seen.
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It’s a short review, but to say more about it would require going into more detail, which could spoil it for you, suffice to say that there’s enough of interest going on and the film goes by at such a pace that it never drags and is quite brilliant, highly recommended.
 

Murder Made Easy TRAILER from David Palamaro on Vimeo.