The Ungodly

In the nameless urban backstreets of America, a woman is brutally murdered. Decked out in camouflage, Mickey Gravatski, a documentary filmmaker, records the carnage with his hand-held camcorder. The killer notices Mickey hiding in the shadows…

Mickey is the proverbial stalker who will go to any lengths to be a renowned documentary filmmaker. Unearthing the killer's province Mickey blackmails him; let me make a documentary about your murderous exploits or I'll send the footage to the cops. The killer, James Lemac has no choice but to 'befriend' Mickey and agree to his demands. Mickey wants to show the real face behind James, to show his true 'thoughts' and 'feelings'. The problem, Mickey is giving away titbits of information about his private life. James murderous signature is removing his victim's eyes with a pocket-knife and placing them inside little glass jars. He takes a photo of Mickey's mother and cuts out the eyes. Mickey is playing a dangerous game of cat and mouse with an unhinged psychopath. The downward spiral begins as Mickey starts to question his actions…


 'Eye' see a bad moon arising for first-time director Thomas Dunn. This 2006 psychological thriller has disappeared into the abyss of forgotten films. Originally entitled The Perfect Witness it has been given a silly horror intoned cover and renamed as the eerie and ill-omened The Ungodly. Its 2009 release is well timed. After three years in limbo-hell, it needs to make some serious green via DVD sales. It is a movie that asks a lot serious philosophical questions and does not dismiss the audience's involvement as most middle-of-the-road psychological thrillers do. But lets not get into a discussion about megalithic Hollywood, even though 'eye' see trouble on the way for this independent movie, its got oodles of personality that's a bustin' out of the celluloid. It deserves to make a few waves when it comes out on DVD.
 
Wes Bentley plays the unemployed filmmaker Mickey who wants to break away from his poverty-stricken existence. Bentley is one of those unfortunate and underrated actors that hasn't made any waves since American Beauty in 1999 and The Claim in 2000.  In The Ungodly, Bentley flourishes as Mickey. His eyes dart everywhere, with a big black beard and semi-homeless look, he nervously smokes cigarettes likes he's ready to crack up. Mickey is a character on the fringes of society. A creature of the night whose fragile sanity is poisoned by James' murderous influence. He is the moral fibre that is slowly disintegrating. We stagger drunkenly towards Mickey's decent into lunacy, like walking an emaciated tightrope between reason and insanity. He's following the serial killers life by keeping all the information on his bedroom wall; discarded cigarette buds, the names of the victims, receipts, photographs, a map with the placement of the deaths. He is equally as disturbed as the killer. He just doesn't know it yet.


The serial killer James Lemac (played by Mark Bukowski) lives an ordinary life in a clear-cut apartment with his cats, helps disabled kids, spends time with his niece and plays pranks on his sister. His normalness is unnerving. He's just like us. We discover his compulsion to kill stems from his childhood. Mickey, the filmmaker and James the killer develop a strange friendship. They sit together in a café and bullshit about which restaurants serve the best food. Looking at the waitress James intones, "her eyes. Perfect blue. Puts the sky to shame". This is when the tension begins between the two characters. James is ready to kill again and Mickey becomes reluctant to get involved. When James kidnaps Mickey's mum the game of cat and mouse is turned around and the filmmaker becomes the victim. James asks Mickey solemnly, 'How does it feel to be a subject?'


The Ungodly is infused with philosophical scope that transcends the stalk and slash tone. One of the most interesting questions it posses is the quandary of the documentary filmmaker; can you distance yourself from your subject matter or do you inadvertently become part of the process? At its heart, it's an American version of Man Bites Dog. The monster is the filmmaker. He refuses to contact the authorities before things spiral out of control. Wes Bentley is a fantastic actor, conveying the complex emotional intensity of filming a "day-in-the-life" documentary about a successive assassin. Mark Bukowski is also exceptional; he's a spontaneous and enigmatic actor that conveys a lot of awkward misguided passion. The city is its own character too; it's dark, dirty and dilapidated, much like the people who inhabit it. The killer in The Ungodly is given a human face, a face we can see beyond the monster, its disturbing subject matter. The Ungodly is an exceptional psychological thriller that outsmarts the majority of cautious and prudent films made by the Hollywood machine.
 


The last line lingers in your memory as the credits fade to black. Taking responsibility for your own actions is not just the concern of the filmmaker and serial killer; it is the concern of the audience too, as James turns on us to ask us a question…