Dishwater dull The Notorious Finster, does little to appeal and even finds a reason to actively dislike it. Lead Amanda Evans is the bright spark, but she can’t save this one.
Notorious serial killer Finster has seemingly ended his reign, leaving the journalist Annie Sullivan (Amanda Evans), who followed his rampage, to go for a more peaceful life away from the city. But, when the killer returns, he soon makes sure his violence has no boundaries.
The Notorious Finster opens up with a decent sequence if shot in a low-budget manner. It brings you in with the hope that there will be a great little thriller inside. Indeed, Amanda Evans is doing her best to elevate the script and throws a lot at the role. Yet even her character has too much going on. Not only is Annie, the writer of a book about Finster, still working on tracking him down, but she has seen too much death in the city and so as you would retreat to the countryside to live a quieter life. That’s enough for the audience to latch onto her; she has our sympathy and interest. However, in this film, she also has to be a recovering alcoholic in a troubled marriage. It’s just too much being chucked in there to be thrown in.
While it has some decent kills, The Notorious Finster falls foul of being, quite simply, dull. Whatever tension should be present, especially in the last 30 minutes, is non-existent. Just characters talking at one another instead of to one another. Worse, there is nothing here that we haven’t seen before, done much better. As an audience member, you are okay with seeing a story similar to others out there. But there appears to be little effortto try to be original. It’s just all so disappointingly placid.
Then, just when you think the film should meander to an uneventful end. They do the old classic trope of showing how a female character has gone through hell. Our killer rapes her. It is pointless and a scene that does nothing to push the story forward. You become aghast at the idea that writer and co-director Robert Henderson thought that including this moment in The Notorious Finster would improve the film. Does our heroine use this horrendous moment to at least find a way to escape? Nope, she just gets sexually assaulted to put her through the wringer a bit more. There needs to be a purpose for a scene like that, a reason to add it to your film, especially a low-budget one like this. If there is no meaningful reason, then scrap it. Henderson doesn’t, and it is close to unforgivable for a filmmaker.
Is The Notorious Finster worth your time? Sadly not, there are some decent moments, but there are so few and far between the inescapable monotony of the script that it can’t be rescued. Hopefully, we will see more of Evans, as she was the only bright spark present throughout.
★ 1/2
The Notorious Finster is out now on digital.
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