Alyce - Out of Control - DVD

Movie: After Caroll (Tamara Feldman) is betrayed by her boyfriend Vince (James Duval), the cuckold convinces her best friend Alyce (Jade Dornfeld) to get really high together. Full of alcohol and drugs, the two end up on the roof of the house where Alyce lives. There, a tragic accident occurs in which Alyce pushes Caroll into the depths. From now on, Alyce is plagued by deep feelings of guilt. Again and again the dead Caroll appears to her, which seems to drive the young woman into madness. With drugs she wants to quench her pain, but this threatens to escalate the whole situation even more...

Ja Lee, director of intellectual masterpieces like Zombie Strippers, has staged with Alyce - Out of Control an atmospheric thriller with a few mystery elements and hefty splatter interludes. Especially the last third and especially the final scene are very effective and spiced with a pleasantly macabre portion of black humor. Unfortunately, the film doesn't have this quality over its entire runtime. Especially the first half of the movie is a bit draggy and seems to only serve the purpose of making the audience realize that Alyce is actually a rather unimpressive young woman who has problems letting other people get close to her. At times, the conversations between Alyce and Caroll seem a bit strained, Tamara Feldman's acting a bit too hysterical, and the staging too superficial to really establish interest in the story and characters.

On the one hand, this suits the emotionally undercooked world in which the story is set. On the other hand, it makes it difficult for the viewer to want to immerse themselves in what's going on. But even if the beginning doesn't really convince, it's worth staying on the ball. Because the more Alyce crashes, the better the movie gets. This isn't because it gets increasingly gory towards the end. Rather, it's due to the fact that the character Alyce becomes more and more interesting, the production more biting and the story more interesting.

In the end, you're left with the feeling that with a better beginning, Alyce - Out of Control might well have had what it takes to become a small cult film. As it is, however, the whole thing has merely become a solid (horror) thriller in which the inclined genre fan is rewarded for his stamina with a nicely nasty finale. And therefore, despite the clear weaknesses, there is still a bottom line: worth seeing!

Picture + Sound: The low budget of the film can of course not expect an audiovisual implementation at expensive blockbuster level. So there is to observe with the very clean picture about some blurring and slight image noise in the darker scenes. The colouring, on the other hand, is coherent and corresponds well to the atmosphere of the film. The sound doesn't offer any spectacular surround fireworks, but it absolutely lives up to the demands that can be placed on a low-budget thriller of this format. Dialogue and music are mixed with good intelligibility, and a few minor sound effects come into play here and there. Interestingly, these are much more pronounced in the English language version. Thus, for example, during a car ride of Alyce and Caroll in the English soundtrack even the engine noises can be heard clearly, on the German soundtrack, however, they are barely existent.

Extras: Except for trailers, the DVD unfortunately has no bonus material to offer.

Conclusion: Alyce - Out of Control is a bloody thriller that, after a somewhat ponderous beginning, picks up decent momentum in the second half before culminating in a great finale. If you like smaller independent thrillers with a bloody horror twist and can see past the weaknesses of the first half, you'll be well entertained here. Only the lack of noteworthy extras strikes then still negatively with the technically neatly implemented DVD

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp