Red Ravens Kiss 

The Red Raven’s Kiss, directed by Austin Sprake, is a Murder Mystery produced at Wilson Castle in Proctor, Vermont. The movie was made with just a $6000 budget, which was not a lot of money. It was filmed on an Iphone, body cam, and a GoPro.

The plot starts with the young detective Piper returning home for the anniversary of her mother's death. She meets with her dad, Wayne, who tells her he has information about her mother's suspicious death. He sets up cameras around the castle to figure out who the murderer is. Their plan is to listen in on the people they have invited who were there a year prior, when the murder occurred. After this point, the timeline of the movie becomes very confusing and hard to follow. 

Throughout the film you see hints of mise en abyme,  meaning film-within-a-film. This adds a different take on the plot where you try to figure out whether the killings are real or just scenes they are filming. This is an intriguing aspect of the plot that had our Journalism Class working hard to put the pieces together. 

Now the story could be good if the story was told in a way that didn’t genuinely confuse us. We wish this story was told in chronological order, but it's not. It’s hard to make a concise timeline in your head. Scenes jump around and skip to random parts of the story. Someone will die in one scene, but in the next, they’ll be alive and well. It’s confusing in a way that frustrates the audience, instead of intriguing them.

The acting wasn’t necessarily the best either, the actors didn’t really convey a lot of emotion and it felt scripted. Even so, the point-of-view of the actors was really interesting and made the film fun to watch; however, the cameras that were situated across the room most of the time, made it hard to hear the actors or see what was going on. Maybe that was the point, making it hard to figure out who the masked murderer really was. 

We recommend this movie for people who like confusing thrillers that take some brain power to put together. 

You can check out a teaser for the movie here but you may have to wait to watch the full film as the Indiegogo fundraising campaign has closed down and it is unclear if it will be released.