Ever want what you can’t have? I mean, sure you’re happy when your friend gets a brand new car while you just duct-taped your rear bumper to the frame to keep it from falling off. Your neighbor’s new job in The Bahamas sounds great, as you trudge off to another day in the florescent jungle. You’re thrilled that your cousin got engaged to that supermodel as you spend another Saturday night alone doing the laundry.
It’s no wonder, then, why “Envy” is one of the Seven Deadly Sins. Just ask Lilith (Misty Mundae). She’s the sort of beautiful young wife who normally would have it all. Yet, she’s stuck in a nightmarishly miserable job, surrounded by obnoxious customers and co-workers. When she gets home, she’s greeted by Jim (Ronnie Kerr), a pathetic lump whose inability to find a job is outdone only by his inability to satisfy her in bed. Adding to her frustration is the fact that Lilith desperately, almost pathologically, craves having a baby, yet is seemingly unable to conceive.
Bad as things are, they only seem to grow worse when Lilith and Jim befriend the young couple next door who appears to have it all. Lilith can only listen through the walls and look on with longing as Aisha (Erika Smith) and Sam (Nikos Psarras) seem blessed with everything Lilith so desperately craves – a loving, passionate relationship, marital bliss, and a child on the way – but seems destined never to have…unless she takes matters into her own hands.
Up-and-coming writer/director Tony Marsiglia has crafted a truly twisted and disturbing tale of envy’s corrosive power in “Sinful.” By telling his story in a non-linear, over-lapping series of events, he’s taken what could have been a simplistic, over-the-top “Lifetime” movie and turned it into an unnerving, genuinely creepy thriller. Smoldering with repressed lust and simmering with ominous longing, “Sinful” sucks you into that special kind of dark place where you know something bad is about to happen…but you just have to watch anyway.
The film also represents a breakthrough performance by Mundae, who demonstrates an almost shocking range of emotions as she takes Lilith down her awful path to fulfillment.
By far Marsiglia’s most mature and intelligent work to date, “Sinful” is sure to satisfy the erotic horror fans’ lust for blood and skin, while delivering something more psychologically satisfying for an audience outside the target demographic. Indeed, it’s fair to say that this moody, brooding film may be the world’s first entry into a whole new filmmaking sub-genre: the “Art-Horror” film.
