LOOPHOLE

So, get this: apparently the secret to violence is in the genes and it's all based on the bloodline of Judas Iscariot! Let that improbable concept sink in for the moment... But it gets even better than that, since this "revelation" leads to a worldwide crisis/exodus with government forces testing every person in the population to determine whether or not they'll commit violence based on this discovery. This leads to more insanity when two college girls get sucked up into all of this, ending in an all-out spiritual war between angels and demons, and despite all of this madness happening, the whole experience of watching this "film" is mind-numbingly dull and then some.

Loophole suffers from the age-old problem of people standing around motionless while explaining the plot to each other as a means of making things more portentous and tense than it actually is. This boring cliché is usually the dearth of all drama, and it just goes to show that if you want to make an exposition scene interesting, you need to find a more efficient and effective way of handling that. But it's clear that writer/producer/director Jenni Ivers doesn't have a grip of how to tell a compelling narrative, instead having people just standing around delivering preachy speeches about religion, violence and how corrupt governments can be.

It doesn't help that the acting in this film is very amateurish, with every actor looking as though they are reading lines rather than fully inhabiting their characters. It's as if each actor was handpicked after their first week in drama school, placed in front of a camera, and expected to deliver real drama to the audience. This film is also armed with some atrocious special effects, understandable for a low-budget film but there's no denying that the green-screen layered backgrounds stand out like a sore thumb.

Overall, Loophole is just another forgettable, bland, throwaway release that has nothing in it whatsoever. Its messages are too preachy, the dialogue is clichéd-riddled, the characterisation is wafer thin, and there's just no real substance to be found. Its theological story makes Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code stories look like the work of Shakespeare in comparison.

LOOPHOLE / CERT: UNRATED / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: JENNI IVERS / SCREENPLAY: / STARRING: CHLOE LUKASIAK, KERA O'BRYON, DEVEN BROMME / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW