The “summer people” come, the “summer people” go and
those that remain throughout the rest of the year see and experience a very
different world on Martha’s Vineyard.
It can be a lonely place.
The summer vacation hotspot of Martha’s Vineyard
serves as the location for director Robert Cole’s Off
Season, which was spawned by a script from a “local”
by the name of Erik Lieblein — he came one season after college and stayed
until after the tourists left … it was a very different place. He kept coming back.
Indican Pictures, which has something of a knack for
discovering edgy films like Off Season, has
selected Apr. 2 for the DVD debut of this “suspense” thriller.
We are introduced to Lena (Jessica Cadden Osborne),
who worked the summer season on Martha’s Vineyard and had high hopes for a
well-paying gig in New York City, but as the “summer people” moved out those
plans fell apart. Going back home is
not an option and there’s nothing for her in the “off season,” but a chance
meeting with a woman named Becca (Amanda Good Hennessey) changes all that.
It seems that Becca and her husband, Kellen (Chance
Kelly — as Vinny in Ray Donovan and
as Detective Ed Cutler in Aquarius),
operate a landscaping business and a farm and they are always desperate for
help after the summer season ends. It’s
a terrific match, wonderful people, quiet, nice money and a chance for Lena to
put the past in the past.
Now Off Season
could have been one of those “come back to my place and we will torture and
kill you” kind of films. All of the
elements are there. Lonely, dreary
place, a family that seems too good to be true and co-workers that are exactly
like Lena … loners with no connection to the outside world. They call that “the victim pool.”
However, Off
Season, while it turns the screws like any good
horror film, takes a different approach to the terror. Lena, meets Becca and Kellen’s daughter,
Sadie (Braedyn Clark — who is actually a local school girl … she delivers a
knockout performance), and the two form a friendship. Things seem normal, lots of hard work,
co-workers run the gamut from quiet to pushy — counted among them is Cassie
(played by Sosie Bacon — Here and Now, 13 Reasons Why) —
but for all of that there’s not much to do.
And there’s your tension.
As the audience, we know that this pleasant little
picture of a happy-place farm is not all that it seems. It’s only when little Sadie gives hints
about a “sadness,” asks if Lena has any sisters and then finally one evening
there’s that moment where she knows that things are about to go south when the
little girl, who genuinely likes her, says “I hope you don’t go missing.”
Off Season,
Apr. 2, a chiller that pulls you in … and won’t let go!!
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