Failure!
It’s a moment James has known is coming yet for which he has failed to prepare; his business loan six months in arrears, he has four days to find a substantial sum of money or the bank will foreclose and he will lose the business he inherited from his late father, while simultaneously his ex-wife is screaming about paying for their daughter’s imminent wedding and on the other line foreman Carlos is seeking authorisation for overtime payments.
Individually each of these would be a problem but collectively the hovering vultures of financial ruin are simply too much, the knock at the door of another former friend with the begging bowl in one hand and a knife in the other the final straw which causes James to snap, beating the unwanted visitor unconscious and locking him in the utility room, a refreshing new approach to negotiation.
Its world premiere at FrightFest and shot in a single take in which Ash vs Evil Dead’s Ted Raimi features large, James never far from the centre of the frame while Ernesto Lomeli’s camera darts from room to room, keeping up with the action and dodging between furniture and the comings and goings of bickering family, creditors and predatory lawyers, Failure! is writ large and directed by Alex Kahuam.
The parade of faces through the expansive and well-upholstered parlour including the groom’s fitting party, bickering parasites in designer gear wrangled by other daughter Maria (Melissa Diaz), and later hair-trigger temper lawyer Alvar (Daniel Kuhlman) who blames James for his own poor decisions, they serve no purpose other than to prod and goad, plot devices rather than characters who leave Raimi reaching for something real to hold onto in what becomes a dramatic vacuum.
A complicated technical proposition well achieved, the rolling ensemble arriving and departing seamlessly on cue, Raimi knows his lines and hits his marks but never takes the role to a place which is more than adequate, a supporting actor given a lead role and insufficient to give an unlikeable character the necessary verve to make him anything other than a tiresomely selfish individual refusing to place his losing hand on the table and quit the game, never changing, growing or showing another side to who he is.
The unfolding real-time awkwardness and disaster of Abigail’s Party for the “me, me, me” generation with Ave Maria replacing Demis Roussos, as a piece of theatre buoyed up by the energy of a live performance Failure! might have been a success, but through the barrier of the constantly jigging camera lens it is observed rather than felt, second hand emotions of those who feel sorry for themselves when they have squandered inherited fortunes most could never dream of.
