While She Was Out(anchor bay)

Director: Susan Montford
Writer: Susan Montford
Cast: Kim Basinger, Lukas Haas, Jamie Starr, Leonard Wu, Luis Chavez, Craig Sheffer

For those looking for a new holiday horror film, the recent release of WHILE SHE WAS OUT is not a welcome Christmas present. The film stars Kim Basinger as Della Myers, an abused housewife who heads out on Christmas Eve for some last-minute shopping, only to be stalked by four youths intent on killing her. It sounds at first like a typical slasher-flick plot, but this film, written and directed by first-timer Susan Montford, does not stack up well against its slasher or holiday-horror predecessors.

After a 15-minute domestic disturbance between Della and her husband, the viewer is forced to watch Della on her monotonous mall visit, which lasts just as long and is just as boring as actual Christmas shopping. We watch our heroine wander from a non-copyrighted version of Starbucks to the lingerie shop to the card store and so on, leading one to wonder why the film wasn’t called WHILE SHE WAS SHOPPING. The intent is to make the audience realize how pathetic Della’s life is (her credit card is declined, the girl at the coffee shop spells her name wrong on the order), but after the first few “events,” the viewer is really just being beaten over the head with a shopping bag full of her miserable suburban life.Finally, Della departs the mall and heads to her car, only to encounter four teenage hooligans (on whose car she had left a note criticizing their two-space parking selfishness). And thus begins the most laughable part of the movie. The gang is like a mini-United Nations (one black, one white, one Hispanic and one Asian), and they look like, and are about as tough as, a Benetton ad. These suburban thugs are nothing but cultural stereotypes, and deliver lines full of trite “street lingo” that feel as forced and unnatural as if your Grandmother was talking “street.” Eventually, Della finds herself on the run through the woods, with only her wits and a toolbox that she grabs along the way to protect her from her multiculti pursuers.Basinger is one of the few bright spots of WHILE SHE WAS OUT. Her performance is actually compelling in parts, but after a while, it feels like she’s playing one generic “victim pushed too far” situation after another. A similar problem afflicts the white gang leader played by Lukas Haas, who has done fine work in past films ranging from MARS ATTACKS to BRICK. But here, he’s stuck playing one brooding-angry-teen cliché after another. This all leads up to a stereotypical “anti-Establishment” monologue that sounds like something every teen wrote in their notebook in high school, right underneath “Kurt Cobain Rulz!”What’s most shocking about this movie is the underlying fear and message it invokes: a youth-gone-wild suburban paranoia that all those below age 25 are up to something sinister and evil. It smacks of some urban legend warning why good suburb-dwellers shouldn’t go out after dark—the damn kids are crazy, nothing but gun-toting murderers ready to attack anyone. The film tries so hard to feed off those concerns that it creates totally unbelievable characters, all making completely unbelievable decisions.The horror industry has seen quite a few very effective psychopathic-youth movies in the past few years. WHILE SHE WAS OUT strives to follow in the wake of other kids-gone-wild films such as JOSHUA, FUNNY GAMES and EDEN LAKE, but ultimately its villains come across as a bunch of juvenile delinquents far more than true psychopaths.

source:http://www.fangoria.com/reviews/2-film/816-while-she-was-out-film-review.html