  Dead Line
Written and Directed by Michelle Fatale
Produced by Michelle Fatale and Christie Love
Featuring: Adriel Joy, David Zahedian, Kristin Burke, and Jon Carlo Alvarez
2006, 35 minutes
Review by: Superheidi
www.michellefatale.com
Some cute kids go off to a cabin in the woods to have some fun for the weekend. One is a vivacious redhead with a healthy sexual appetite. The other girl is a smart, but shy and reserved, blond. The two guys are typical teenagers; horny but funny. On the verge of graduation, these two couples find themselves the victims of a psychotic, crank-calling murderer. But who would want to hurt them, and why? If this plot seems familiar, its because writer/director Michelle Fatale has seen one (or 10) too many slasher films. I guess she’s been impressed with recent slasher imports like High Tension, and the emerging trend of “twists”, because she took the “slasher film” blueprint and not only gave it a chilling variation, but added on a distinctly “feminine” (as well as “feminist”) interpretation...
"He put it WHERE???!"
Michelle’s film is hampered by the same faults most low budget slashers suffer from; cliché dialogue and situations, stereotypical (seemingly) incarnations of the Final Girl and her slutty (and soon to be dead) best friend; an isolated cabin where there’s no one around to help the teenagers as soon as they start dying. Despite these, and several budget-related technical issues like sound quality, there are some very cool innovations in Michelle’s film that you won’t see in other slashers being released these days. Michelle is good at directing groups of people in the same space together and her actors interact n a very natural way. She develops decent scares based on the cinematography and timing. She opts for full male nudity rather than traditional female exploitation. The sex scenes, though monotonously mandatory for a slasher film, are female friendly and don’t use the women as sexual movie props. The female characters, while formulaic (initially, anyway), are as equally likable or detestable as the males. Michelle didn’t just make a stupid slasher film, she also explored interesting dilemmas like virginity, relationships, child abuse, and a somewhat Freudian study of the manifestations of guilt and split personalities.
The sexually charged redhead, Kristin Burke, is not only a great beauty but also a talented actress. Her devious and morally bankrupt role brings some fun and sparkle to the heavy areas that are dominated by Adriel Joy’s demure and suffering Jane. The irony in Dead Line (and irony is fun) is the power struggle between these two women at the end, essentially battling over the role of the Final Girl, which is won, as usual, by the “good” girl. Jane is the last left alive, but she’s also unknowingly been the cause the slayings.
"Just a towel. Why?... hey, wait, who is this?"
The run time of Dead Line is slightly over 35 minutes, which puts it in a tough category. Too short to be a feature, too long to be a short, it’s difficult for me to know whether I feel it should have been extended into a feature, or cut down into something under 20 minutes. But I do feel that it should have been changed length-wise into something more palatable to the general independent horror audience. Michelle’s attempt at building up character development in the beginning seems unnecessary when the ending comes abruptly 35 minutes later. If the film were a feature, there would need to be a bit more development of the storyline and background. As it stands, it’s a story with a pace that somehow feels awkward.
Dead Line employs some powerful imagery and is definitely above-average in regards to standard low-budget digital horror filmmaking. The fact that it’s made by women completely cinches the deal for me.
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