Think you’re having a bad day, heh? Well, I’m willing to bet you didn’t start it with a dead ex-lover in your bed (but hey, who am I to say?). Either way, that’s the setup for writer and director Chris Sivertson‘s 2018 thriller Shattered Memories where we meet poor Holly (Elizabeth Bogush), a nice young woman who’s woken into a nightmare. Seems the guy whose bed she’s in had a killer night with her, literally. He’s stone cold dead with a bloody butcher knife on the floor beside him. Thing is, she can’t remember how it happened and now she’s got to figure out who did what and why before maybe she’s next.
With literal blood on her hands, Holly runs from the house in a panic, dialing but not connecting with 911. That leaves us, the equally confused audience, trying to play catch up as the movie jumps back and forth between the party the night before and the next day as we see both sides of Holly and the mess she gets herself into. Bonus, she’s got a husband name Glenn (Philip Boyd) and a grown son (Walker Borba) out of town on a camping trip. The plot thickens.
So the dead guy. He’s Ray (Brad Schmidt), a real live Texas cowboy, complete with over-sized cowboy hat and boots, not quite fitting in with the city folk drinking wine at the posh anniversary party where they run into each other again. What’s his deal? Sure, he knows the host of the party – part of a couple Holly is responsible for hooking up fifteen years ago – but he’s also the father of a student at the high school where Holly works as a counselor. Oh, and he’s like wicked handsome, so, you know, there’s that. Women swoon.
Wanting to be a twisty whodunnit, Shattered Memories is a goofy, overblown potboiler with melodramatic performances and direction that is undeniably fun to watch, the pulpiness of it all making it almost comical from frame one. This is flashback bonanza with some flashbacks flashing back to moments that literally happened in a flashback, so like, sometimes it’s not even clear just where the heck we are in the plot. But does that matter? Meh. Not really.
Surprising, the story actually has some legs, beginning with an opening bit that at least has some tingles of suspense. I mean, a hint of sex, a dab of murder, and a tease of mystery are three parts to an entertaining cocktail that really shouldn’t fail. And we’re supposed to be paying attention of course, wondering which of these loaded characters in the small cast could be the real killer, though let’s be clear, we’re not exactly talking Poirot or Miss Marple material here, more like a mid-afternoon soap opera. You don’t have to think all too hard is what I’m saying.
Speaking of soap operas, let’s talk Bogush. Ever see The Young and the Restless? She had a long stint on that one, but she’s showed up on a host of other TV hits, like How I Met Your Mother, The Big Bang Theory, The Mentalist and many more. She’s got the energy for this and a good look, convincing as a mom with a few poor decisions in her past, but she’s stuck in a production that let’s be honest, isn’t exactly simmering with top quality ingredients to begin with. It’s too bad ‘cuz she’s great and keeps every fiber of energy the film has in play.
THE GOOD: Cheesy and hopelessly hokey, Shattered Memories is a low budget flick that taps into the seedy corners of love and betrayal with a dull blade, making it sort of charmingly offbeat. The actors commit with all kinds of syrup, and there’s no getting around that the longer it lasts, the better the entanglements become. You’ll genuinely want to know how it ends, even if it extends that farther that it should.
THE BAD: Cheesy and hopelessly hokey … well, there’s a lot about Shattered Memories that is stilted and bland, Sivertson’s script far better than his direction, which is the very definition of generic. Wound up tight with canned music and all kinds of padding, this is a landmine of weak traps due to its awkward flashbacks and predictable intersections that is ultimately toothless for its lack of violence, sex, or urgency.
THE SCORE: [wp-review-total id=”53857″]