Ginger Lynn Allen acts her a*s off in the insidiously fun indie horror flick The Gifted, written by Frank Phillip Aguilar and directed by August Anthony Aguilar. It opens back in the early 1970s, with little Barbara (Kelsey Hayleigh) and her mother (Ginger O’Toole) working in their garden. Angry hippie mother Lauren (Jaime Snyder) storms over, accusing little Barbara of hypnotizing her kid Shelly (Olivia Kunkle). Barbara’s mother tries to calm them both down, but Lauren escalates and starts getting physical. So Barbara’s mother rings a bell out of her pocket. She then orders Lauren and her kid to leave crawling on all fours, which both do, totally hypnotized.
“…she first has to confess all the awful things she has done because of her gift. Barbara gets all the horrors…”
Barbara is scolded, as she has been told not to charm people without permission. Barbara is also warned never to let her father (Liam Lobo) know she has the charming power because horrible things would happen. Fast forward 50 years later, with a long car pulling into a cemetery, a grown-up Barbara (Ginger Lynn Allen) and her girlfriend Vicky (Jennifer Pearl) getting out. A chauffeur (Bing Fu) takes Barbara’s bell from her, as she won’t need it where she is going.
As they walk through the gravestones, Vicky tells Barbara she isn’t feeling good about what they are about to do. Barbara is insistent, burdened by all the bloodshed and destruction she has caused over the decades with her charming powers. She enters a dark temple filled with sinister cloaked figures in the pews. They are met by an evil clergyman (Joe Casterline), who tells Barbara she can absolve her of her sins. However, she must first confess all the awful things she has done because of her gift. Barbara gets all the horrors of her life off her chest, starting with the unforgivable thing that happened back in the ’70s at the birthday party…
"…shows that some stars never go out, they just change shades of light and glow harder."
