2 out of 5

Directed by: Tony Krantz

Pretty incompetent, but a rare instance of a rating bolstered almost exclusively by some good ideas.  ‘Otis’ looks like a DTV flick – and it is, on Warner’s ‘Raw Feed’ imprint – but even moreso than the modern day crop of that type of flick, shot with a very 80s VHS-looking softness that may be an attempt to play up the satirical sitcom side of things but unfortunately, along with the odd editing, just makes it look cheap from the get-go.  Which it isn’t, necessarily, as its main sets are done up pretty well and we definitely have some name actors with Daniel Stern, Illeana Douglas, and Kevin Pollak, who work magic on their one-dimensional characters but can’t do much, otherwise, to salvage the uneven tone.

Otis is a tall, overweight serial killer.  He seems to like to kidnap young blonds, call them by a particular name (which – lordy – escapes me, even though I only watched this hours ago), dress them up as a cheerleader, and endlessly relive some ill-fated, or probably never-happened, prom night.  One of the valid ideas here, to which we’ll credit Erik Jendresen and Thomas Schnauz’s script, is to provide context for Otis’ obsessions but no overt explanations, which flies somewhat against the m.o. for the genre (which generally is either no-explanation or over-explanation).  Bostin Christopher, playing the titular lead, brings some of this backstory to life and we can tell he built up a good character history in his head, but again, the way this thing is pieced together, it never really has the time or focus it needs to make it an integral part of the story.  Which flips from flirting with torture porn – kidnap the girl, Riley (Ashley Johnson) – into revenge porn, which is where the other good idea happens, but way too late in the game to make it feel like a win.  This is a telling piece of the failure: Otis seems to really want to be about this latter good idea, but squanders too much time leading up to it.  In part, I understand wanting to give it some justification, but the world as presented is too imbalanced between outlandishness and outrage for it to ever make sense within the film world.

The woeful editing I speak of, though, is more visual: the camera seems to shift only because Krantz had no idea what else to do with his bloated scenes.  Bickering happens for runtime, so we’ll reframe a shot for no reason, cutting a character out, or we’ll flip 180 perspective, again for no other reason than it apparently just seemed like time to move the camera.  It’s not shaky cam by any means, it just feels sloppy.  Which goes double for the mixing.  Otis, in his 80s dreams, has a constant appropriate soundtrack playing, but this is cut in way too much and mixed much too high to allow for either thrills or comedy.

So, yeah, incompetent construction that had me constantly glancing at the clock.  Thus, it says something about the script that its potential sneaks through the film’s otherwise tepid presentation.

As a final caveat, I mention the “porn” genres up there, but there’s nothing to fear: only the topic slots in with those genres.  The gore is immensely tame; language is probably the R / unrated barrier here.