DEAD ENVY -- Movie Review by Porfle

For his feature debut as writer (with Stacy Hullah), director, and star, Harley Di Nardo delivers a textbook example of slick, efficient, eye-pleasing filmmaking that pretty much gets everything right.

The result, DEAD ENVY (2017), isn't the most nailbiting thriller you'll ever see, but it delivers the goods at the end and gives us a fun ride on the way there.

The premise is familiar--washed-up rock singer David Tangiers (Di Nardo) is trying to break back into the big time while struggling to keep a chic hairstyling salon going with the help of his faithful wife Cecily (Samantha Smart).

Enter Javy (Adam Reeser), a fervent fan with his own hopes of making it in the music business.  The seemingly nice young man ingratiates himself with David and Cecily to the point of getting a job at the salon, but after that his fascade of niceness eventually begins to fade and reveal an inner instability and even perhaps psychosis.

All the expected plot complications follow--Javy, while pretending to be a well-meaning admirer, begins to ruin David's life from the inside.  He sabotages his salon business, botches his potential musical comeback deals, and, worst of all, tries to come between him and Cecily by setting him up and then blackmailing him (anonymously, of course).

The bad vibes build as David considers submitting Javy's terrific demo disc (we're told it's terrific anyway) as his own creation, but the story takes its nastiest turn when Javy's really, really dark side begins to emerge.

I don't want to reveal too much, but the story's simmering suspense just keeps rising in a sort of Hitchcockian way until finally things boil over into a tense, tightly-staged, and exciting life-or-death finale.

In addition to Di Nardo's aforemention skills as a filmmaker, all of this is helped immeasurably by some very capable and (fortunately) admirably understated performances--no histrionics or frantic eye-rolling here, just some good actors giving us convincing characters that sell the somewhat outlandish story and  make us care about them.

The supporting cast is small, but among them I liked Carla Wynn as Dawn, an eccentric spiritualist whose gets visions of future peril as soon as Javy touches her hair (which everyone ignores, of course), and Chrissy Bonilla as Sam, a hairstylist who also takes an instant dislike to Javy and is similarly ignored (her fate is chilling).

As a suspense thriller, DEAD ENVY is one of those really nicely-done efforts that starts slow and builds just enough to keep stringing us along until the payoff.  I like the characters and the actors playing them, and I enjoyed letting this gripping little movie have its way with me for awhile.

Dead Envy: English / USA / 71 minutes

Opens in Los Angeles August 24th at the Arena Cinelounge Sunset, followed by a launch on Cable and Digital HD, including iTunes, Amazon Instant, Google Play and Vudu, on September 3rd.