By Simon Thompson
Chip Joslin’s Insane Like Me ? is a mediocre Southern-Gothic vampire movie, which as a viewing experience could best be described as Christopher Moltisanti’s attempt to remake Jacob’s Ladder. Despite being made on what I imagine to be a pretty moderate budget, from a technical standpoint Insane Like Me ? is shot, edited, and lit to a high, professional, standard so it’s a shame that the dialogue, pacing, and acting don’t reach the same mark.
The plot of the movie follows protagonist Jake Morgan (Britt Bankhead), an army veteran who is returning to his Texas home after duty. At a welcome home party thrown for Jake by his brother in law Will ( Paul Kokler), with whom he has a tense relationship Jake discovers that his girlfriend Samantha (Grace Patterson), is pregnant. While this is all going on however, it turns out that lovable scamp Will decided to throw the welcome-home party in a creepy haunted house, so vampires-of course- turn up and kill everyone inside including Samantha.
Because this sounds absolutely ludicrous Jake is wrongly blamed for Samantha’s death by her father- who just so happens to be the town sheriff (Eric Roberts). Jake gets committed to a mental hospital and after being released nine years later decides to try and pick up the pieces of that night and rebuild his life, bringing him into contact with Samantha’s sister Crystal (Samantha Reddy).
The problem with the narrative of Insane Like Me?, is that the plot involving Jake should have been the main focus of Chip Joslin’s and Britt Bankhead’s script, over the secondary plot involving Crystal and her cadre of incredibly irritating student friends whose only narrative purpose is to be the vampires’ elevenses. Crystal’s arc feels clumsily integrated into Jake’s, and while I understand what Bankhead and Joslin were trying to do narratively, the end result of their attempt to connect the two plots is a story with shoddy pacing.
The dialogue and characterisation in Insane Like Me ? wouldn’t exactly frighten David Mamet, with the characters speaking in a mixture of exposition and b-roll material from a House of The Dead game. The acting isn’t much to write home about either- with Britt Bankhead’s performance as Jake Morgan basically amounting to being a bargain bin Rick Grimes.
I will reserve special praise for Eric Roberts’s performance as the town sheriff, however. Eric Roberts is an actor that I absolutely love, to the extent that I would watch him do a community theatre panto or eight straight direct to DVD two handers of him and Xzibit. Every single time he’s on screen serving up a delicious slice of southern fried sadism to the audience he’s an absolute joy to watch, with the only negatives being that he’s barely in the movie and that every time he’s on screen he bring his co-stars’ limited abilities right under a microscope.
To conclude, Insane Like Me ? is a generic, predictable, and forgettable outing that wastes one of the great character actors of our time in Eric Roberts, and manages to generate no suspense whatsoever after about 20 minutes. This is a muddled mess of a movie to the point that it distracts you from Chip Joslin’s ability as a technical filmmaker.
Insane Like Me is available now on VOD platforms.
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