Todd Platt is a dissatisfied and lonely man. Following his parents’ tragic death, he’s in therapy, on medication and spending the very last of his inheritance. He has no friends, few job prospects, and a deep sense of resentment and rage at the world he feels himself disconnected from. His judgemental and unsympathetic therapist does little more than switch his medication around and urge him to sort himself out. When Todd bumps into waitress-and-aspiring-actor Amy, he becomes convinced he must focus all his attention on his relationship with his psychiatrist and his potential new girlfriend. But Todd’s mental problems mean that he’s only able to deal with these connections in the most abnormal and disturbing ways.
It would be heartening to see fewer independent thriller and horror scriptwriters introducing characters struggling with mental illness simply as ciphers for the violent and deranged sociopaths required by the plot. But the makers of Todd stick to the traditional template. The story starts with Todd’s OCD, and moves through his inappropriate behaviour towards other people, to arrive at the explosive aggression and violence he directs towards those who disappoint him.
Todd is a micro-budget indie film, and the frugality of the funds available to the producers is evident throughout. The quality of the acting is also decidedly uneven, and there are some questionable performances amongst the ensemble cast. Todd’s illness is not really explored ahead of his descent into full-blown mania, but he remains a pretty dislikeable figure. His therapist Richard Miller is fairly repugnant too; self-absorbed, short-tempered, and a dysfunctional husband and father. Only Amy (and some other minor characters – like her co-worker and a local bartender) come across as decent human beings, although Amy’s naïvety exposes her to exploitation by others who cruelly manipulate her ambitions.
Writers James Catizone and Aaron Warren (who also directs) try to turn things around in the finale to present Todd as a redemptive morality tale. But there’s not enough substance in the film’s treatment of its own psychological and psychiatric preoccupations for them to be able to pull this off effectively. As a result, Todd comes across as an overfamiliar tale of attempted retribution, against those perceived to have slighted him, by someone whose mental health is unbalanced. Quite a few filmmakers have already trudged through this same rut.
