“This is the bargaining phase,
go on”
Rebound is a low budget thriller directed by first time director Megan Freels revolving around failed actress and all round loser (that isn’t fair but is how other reviews have her) Claire who after discovering her boyfriend cheating on her, in a hilariously bad sex scene that is repeated constantly throughout the film to the point it becomes hypnotic, and decides to run away from her problems and not for the first time I suspect rather than deal with them.
I liked Claire. At least she wasn’t the always right, do no wrong heroine that is standard these days.
So upon running away her car breaks down and wouldn’t you know it it happens near the worst town possible for her.
So we meet the ever increasingly weird townsfolk, who you can already imagine if you’ve ever seen a town in a horror film filled with ever increasingly weird townsfolk, that have that small town mentalitywhen dealing with her.
Here she runs afoul of our tormentor but that is with only 25 minutes left in the film.
Honestly I quite liked the build up. I felt the film got better as well as the performances as it went on.
In fact I would’ve quite liked the film to be about Claire stranded in a town with surreal characters and her being the only sane person.
Claire is a big drip. She constantly has flashbacks to walking in on her boyfriend cheating on her and even though it has only been a week she can’t let it go just like the fact she had to pay the rent. My god you had to pay most of the rent.
That’s how it has been for thousands of years since rent was invented so what makes you so special?
I blame the direction and story for this. Less of her constantly having flashbacks that serve no other purpose than to have the standard ‘suddenly snapped out of the flashback to allow time to have passed’ and a bit more of her just getting on with things.
Too much whining and dwelling on the past rarely makes for a good lead. In fact she hardly complains about the car that has just broken down and left her stranded and almost penniless which is happening there and thent now than she does her ex and paying the rent!
With only 25 minutes left to do what you felt was going to be the majority of the film it does make the final, revelation shall we say, feel unbelievable. Forced even but at least it doesn’t fall into the usual final girl cliché which I am beyond fed up with.
The performance of Ashley James as Claire is good. Some actual tears would’ve been nice but I got used to watching her and felt she did her job ok
Not spectacularly but ok.
Mark Scheibmeir on the other was much better. I liked how his character changed and became more expressive and confident but as with most low budget films there are always ropey acting and this was no exception.
I have seen worse.
The picture quality was fair though it does have that YouTube look about it that almost all low budget horror films have yet it was still decent and not a something I’d mark the film down on.
The audio though…
For me audio is important for immersion and probably more so than the picture quality.
Now the audio isn’t the worst I’ve heard for these type of low budget films, not by a long shot but it still has that quality like it was recorded using the camera’s mic not a professional boom mic.
If you can get this far into production you must be able to hire a boom mic and operator but like I said this is a bug bear of mine and the sound was passable.
Not the worst film seeing as horror right now is in a lull. Horror is in a bad way and there is drivel upon drivel being released with barely anything memorable for us fans. No new icons or heroes or decent series but at least I enjoyed Rebound which is more than can be said for most modern film.
If anything it shows the director has some talent and with a better script and better budget (plus decent audio equipment) I think she could do something good providing she continues to attempt to try to avoid the usual tropes and clichés haunting horror.
At 84 minutes minutes why not give it a go. I am confident you’ve sat threw much worse recently and you might be interested in looking out for Megans next film
