NEW TO VOD! Deanna Locke (Allison Marie Volk) works a thankless job as an assistant to Maxine Williams (Wendy Wilkins), a hard, uncaring person who constantly belittles her underlings. These daily condemnations of Deanna’s work ethic do nothing to boost her already shot confidence. Ever since Deanna’s fiance Tom (Christopher Glenn Cannon) left her, she feels unloved and worthless. While that incident isn’t exactly recent, Deany, as her friends call her, is hung up on him.
One particularly awful day at the office, Deanna winds up fired, and in a fit of blind rage, she kills Maxine. Panicking, she drives the corpse to the only place that comes to mind–Tom’s place. Deanna starts to dig a hole in the yard when Angela (Sarah Siadat) comes outside to see what the commotion is all about. Deanna introduces herself and Angela exclaims that she is a bit early, so not everything is ready, but to come on in anyway.
“…she drives the corpse to the only place that comes to mind–Tom’s place.”
Angela is Tom’s fiance, and this is a party celebrating Tom’s return from an overseas trip. As more guests arrive, they are startled to see Deanna at this gathering. Upon Tom entering the house, things get very awkward but not as troublesome as when a not dead Maxine waltzes in, dazed and unable to recall much of anything, including her name. Is Tom really over Deanna? Is Maxine going to remember anything? Will Deanna’s secret be found out?
So goes Deany Bean Is Dead, a movie more interested in mood and tone than plot. Deanna herself, Allison Marie Volk, wrote the screenplay and in broad strokes, this story has been done better elsewhere; most recently in the remarkable Izzy Gets The F*ck Across Town. But several original ideas and scenarios still make this a fun watch. The script’s most ingenious angle is the use of podcasts. Deanna loves a particular podcast about real-life murders, so at every major decision or perilous time that crops up over the course of the night, the narrator of the podcast does a voice-over talking about the best way to not get caught is to bury the body someplace unexpected or how a confident person isn’t a suspect. It is delivered in a wry manner, which makes it all the more entertaining.
"…more interested in mood and tone than plot."
