By Michael C. Moore, Kitsap Sun, Sunday, April 6, 2008

The whole slasher-film genre is a pretty theme-and-variations affair: Whatever else happens, people are going to get slashed.

You've got your slasher, you've got the people charged with stopping the slasher, and you've got the people who are potential slashees.

Your slasher is a Freddie Kreuger-Jason Voorhies-Michael Meyers knock-off, but hopefully with a twist that sets him apart. Your stoppers somehow are responsible for either touching off the slasher's murderous impulse, or unwittingly turning him loose to begin his killing spree, or both. The potential slashees are mostly young, attractive and not too bright, and to varying degrees deserve a good slashing.

Credit local filmmakers Norb Caoili, Rob Portmann and Kurt Svennungsen, whose independent film "Frayed" screens April 17 at the Egyptian Theater in Seattle, for being true to the classic slasher-film theme while managing to find enough variation to make their story — homicidal maniac escapes from the loony bin and sets out on a rampage — seem fresh when compared to most of what the slasher-flick genre is filling the video-store shelves with these days.

Not that I sit down and watch every slasher movie that the cable networks throw on. But I've seen enough to label "Frayed" as a worthy, and worthwhile, entry in the genre.

It's also of interest to Kitsappers, because it stars Bremerton native Alena Dashiell (as the most resourceful and redeemable of the potential slashees), and because one of its principal locations is a woodsy cabin near Olalla.

The film's been earning positive reviews from screenings at genre and indie film festivals, and Svennungsen — who served as executive producer with his wife, Dana — recently announced that Lionsgate has picked "Frayed" up for release and worldwide DVD distribution by Dream Entertainment.

Not bad for a trio of South King County horror buffs who mixed the writing and filming of "Frayed" with their day jobs and produced the film on a pawn-shop budget.

Not that "Frayed" looks cheap — it doesn't. The cinematography by Karel Bauer is dark (it is, after all, a slasher movie), but never murky. The effects are realistically gruesome, but in most cases surprisingly restrained. Co-directed by Caoili and Portmann, the film resists the penchant of many a slasher film to substitute buckets-of-blood quantity for quality.

The film's buzz scene — the uber-brutal murder that lands young Kurt in a Puget Sound-area ha-ha hotel for life — is shocking not for its excess, but because it seems so real (kudos to actress Jeanette Maus and special effects makeup guy Tim Pierson for their work). I'm censoring myself here, because I don't want to give too much away, but if I ever saw anyone blankety-blanked to death with a blankety-blank, I'm pretty certain it would look and sound pretty much the way they got it down on film for "Frayed."

The film centers around Gary (Aaron Blakely), a security guard from the nuthouse Kurt has just escaped from. Gary finds himself pursued through the woods by the shadowy, masked maniac, right into the campsite of a quartet of naughty teens in the midst of a night of drinkin', smokin' and foolin' around — all the things, in short, that mad slashers always have found abhorrent and punishable by butchery.

One of them is Sara (Dashiell), a somewhat reluctant, peer-pressured participant in all the miscreant behavior, who just happens to be both the sister of the slasher and the daughter of the troubled town sheriff (Gary Doupe). A little thick, yes, but that's slasher-film logistics for you.

When Kurt attacks, Sara, tough-girl buddy Veronica (Tasha Smith-Floe) and Gary escape, leaving the boyfriends for Kurt to use as carving practice. They make it back to the house where the sheriff's second wife, Jolene (Kellee Bradley) is holed up with a pistol, a big fear and an itchy trigger finger to go with them. The tension mounts, the body count escalates and the plot twists come hot and heavy for the final 30 minutes or so. It's not always plausible, but it is high-octane, edge-of-your-seat, popcorn-munchin' stuff all the same.

The acting is generally strong, and adds as much to the menace of the film as the fake blood and incisions. Smith-Floe is effectively obnoxious as the self-obsessed Veronica, to the point where you're actually rooting for Kurt to get within hacking range and give her her come-uppance. And Dashiell — known more around Kitsap for her dozens of musical roles on theater stages in Bremerton and Silverdale — holds her own in the pantheon of horror-movie heroines, going scream for scream and tremble for tremble and matching survival instincts with the best of them.

Her scene in the house alone with up-to-then helpful but still creepy Gary, when she suddenly realizes that things might not be at all what they've seemed, is among the film's best — a simple, suspenseful set-up to the mayhem that lies ahead.

"Frayed" is extremely derivative of some of the touchstone films of the slasher genre, but comes off more as an homage than a rip-off — a cross-section of what made Caoili, Portmann and Svennungsen want to make their own film.

The result is a stylish little work of overachievement that has a decent bit of nuance to sweeten its familiar slasher-film formula.

 © 2007 Kitsap Sun

_________________________________________________________________________________