Norma’s brother (Anthony Paige) is on his way to his sister’s wedding when he hits a little bump in the road. Actually, it’s a big bump; a man that the panicked motorist has run down in his haste to get to the big event. Rather than going for help or taking his victim to the hospital like any rational human being would do, this clod throws his victim in the trunk and takes off. After a nosy good Samaritan truck driver (Rob Novick), trying to help out with a flat tire, opens the trunk and receives a tire iron to the skull for his efforts, the increasingly frantic driver gets pulled over by a suspicious cop (Steve Langevin) for a busted tail light. When the cop forces Norma’s brother to open the trunk…only to find it empty, the freaked out sibling must find out what happened to his erstwhile victim (Mike Carlin) and still get to Norma’s (Casey Hushion) wedding on time.
“The Body” is a fairly decent effort if, as I suspect, this is a student film. Director Ryan Hushion does an adequate job telling his story without the luxury of dialogue, although he’s a little lax on his film grammar. For one thing, this film is missing more than one establishing shot. (We never even see a plot point as critical as the brother actually hitting his victim with the car, for instance. It’s not even faked. Instead, Hushion leaves it up to the audience to assume that’s what’s happened.) There are other problems as well. The film’s pacing is far too sluggish and the absence of a tripod leads to a growing case of motion sickness.
Still, the film hangs together and makes more sense than other, far more sophisticated efforts. For that, Ryan Hushion’s film earns a grade of “Pass.”
