Blake (Jason Long) and Perry (Græme Davies) are a couple of no-account parking lot security guards on patrol. Blake displays little to no patience for his bumbling sidekick, sicing him on the seemingly abandoned car at the far end of the lot with virtually no training and leaving him on his own. Blake didn’t know — and Perry was about to find out — that the car was actually occupied by Elaine (Tammy Roberts), a psychopathic child-napper…whose victim turns out to be a doll in a car seat. Not that that prevents her from talking to the toy as if it were real, nor beating the snot out of Perry when he tries to issue his citation. The film only turns more surreal when the “child’s” parents show up and Blake returns to find a battered Perry hogtied on the parking lot. That’s all we get to work with in the six minutes Robert Cuffley’s “Soother” gives us to figure out what’s going on. It’s not enough. This film simply doesn’t make any sense, outside of its own inherent wierdness as a bizarre little slice of life. Even so, other than the never explained fake baby, this is a film populated by largely unsympathetic characters that’s mightily devoid of much substance. Nothing much soothing about that.
