New Year’s Absolution
It should be a time of reflection and celebration, looking back and remembering long-standing and lost friendships, achievements and failures, and looking forward to the next steps, making plans and improving, the “five and ninety nine” friends who graduated high school together, now only four, spending New Year’s Eve together alongside their respective significant others and performing the ritual which has bound them.
Anonymous resolutions pulled from a hat while well-prepared hostess Claire, girlfriend Kira, boyfriend Travis and wife Misty chat in the kitchen, prissy host Damon, pill-popping doctor Roy, and Stuart who likes his cars classic and his men well-tuned laugh as they draw their lots, but despite the random nature of the draw hot-tempered Jacob sees his as personally directed at him, storming out and causing a scene on the rainy driveway which will change the direction of the night when he “accidentally discharges” his gun.
Directed by Nick Leisure, New Year’s Absolution is the well-planned but disappointing party that never quite takes off, guests in place, crab cakes served, champagne chilling for the bells and cocktails and (low carb) beer on hand as the clock counts down, but despite the premise of best friends dissolving into a bloody nightmare Damion Stephens’ script never makes them seem more than selfish and self-obsessed strangers who grudgingly spend time together.
The Last Supper having formalised the setting of intellectuals debating the morality of murder and societal obligations, New Year’s Absolution is the inversion, Damon and Claire (Joel Brady and Shala White) owning a luxurious hilltop home, all their associates other than perhaps aspiring influencer Kira (Siddalle Diaz) and Jacob (Josh Gilmer) who took a wage cut to join the police in response to the challenge of the previous year conspicuously wealthy and privileged.
Their positions insulating them from the consequences of their irresponsible past decisions, with blood literally squirting out on the polished walnut floors, the assurances of heart surgeon Roy (Michael Copon) that it is not too serious go unchallenged, Stuart (Rafael Siegel) returning to the party to drink rather than watching over Travis (Lamondo Hill II) as he bleeds out as Jacob laments “people just don’t look away when white cops shoot black gay guys any more.”
The second accident indicating the film may be moving in a more outrageous fashion, the hope is short lived, subsequent killings prompted by finger-pointing and recrimination making less sense with each stabbing and strangling without the complexity or depth to make the actions of the characters believable and without the chaotic frenzy required to overcome the shortcomings, the champagne flat and served without a final mad twist to close the evening with a bang; for superior seasonal carnage, open a gift from Secret Santa instead.
New Year’s Absolution is available on digital download now
