DIANE -- Movie Review by Porfle

Director Michael Mongillo (BEING MICHAEL MADSEN) has applied his visual skills to creating a murder mystery, DIANE (2017), that's nice to look at, especially when the camera focuses on lovely actress Carlee Avers in the title role as a struggling singer whose dead body, clad only in underwear and an overcoat and stabbed with a screwdriver, is found in the backyard of a wounded war veteran who lives alone.

The screenplay by Mongillo and Matt Giannini is equally engaging as we follow the consequences that Steve (Jason Alan Smith, THE LIGHTKEEPERS) must endure after discovering the body and being accused of murder by not only his boorish neighbors and various shopkeepers but also by some of the most insufferably smug police detectives ever committed to film (kudos to these actors for bringing such cretins to life).

The first half of the film pretty much belongs to Smith as the likable but terminally distant loner Steve, whose limp is just the most obvious sign of his deep war wounds.

We know he's a bit off right from the start when, upon finding the dead Diane in his backyard, his first impulse is to snap a picture of her on his phone because she is, as he will later admit to the police, the most beautiful woman he has ever seen.

After that the film settles into a languid, noirish, slowburn sort of narrative that I was able to easily settle into as well, since the mystery of Diane's death and Steve's growing obsession with her--he often stares at her picture while imagining them together in various situations--are presented with a sort of hypnotic quality that effortlessly strung me along as I awaited further revelations.

The story gets darker and creepier when Steve installs a used VHS surveillance camera and intently watches the crime scene until strange things start to happen--supernatural things, apparently, or at least in his fevered mind.  Elements of the ghostly thriller begin to creep in when flashes of Diane on the TV screen and seemingly in real life start to haunt Steve's mind both awake and asleep.

My favorite scenes are those in which Steve must deal with a couple of those oafish neighbors who "don't like a killer living on their street" and then gets taken in by the cops for the full interrogation treatment.  Here, Jason Alan Smith's low-key, effective performance carries the film and holds our interest quite adequately.

It's what comes not long after the halfway mark, however, that left me feeling ambivalent about DIANE. The increased presence of Carlee Avers is good--she's an appealing actress and I enjoyed watching her in the several scenes she's afforded later in the film--but the way the story works itself out was, for me, a letdown.  While I liked this movie very much for most of the way, I found its resolution distinctly anti-climactic. 

Diane will open in Los Angeles September 7th at the Arena Cinelounge Sunset, followed by a launch on Cable and Digital HD, including iTunes, Amazon Instant, Google Play and Vudu, on September 17th.

English / USA / 82 minutes