Lonely Hearts – Written Review

Lonely Hearts

Written Review

As the well-known, famous, renowned and redundantly presented, fictional Dr. Hannibal Lecter would say: “Lonely hearts and mended hearts… All taste the same.”

Welcome everyone, to MyIndie Review Vlog! I am Asaf Angel from MyIndie Productions. Today I’ll be tackling the 2018 horror feature Lonely Hearts, written and directed by Jessica Hunt and MyIndie featured artist Sam Mason Bell for Trash Arts Films!

Thank you, Jessica and Sam, for sharing your film with us!

As mentioned last week, MyIndie Review Vlog is now sponsored by Angerman Distribution – A distribution company devoted to helping independent filmmakers from all around the world get their work out to the viewing public.

Lonely Hearts is the name of a reality dating show which is predicated upon taking a variety of men and women from different backgrounds and ages and putting them together in a secluded environment, for a few days, on a camping experience loaded with party games, challenges and heavily manipulated scenarios, in order to create some fairly low class TV drama out of them. And… of course… possibly help them find love…

Our participants Donny, Carol, Freddy, Claire and Kirsty, portrayed by Martin W. Payne, Sue Dawes, Chris Mills and Tyne Elizabeth Stewart, arrive at a camping site, which the production team set up as the location for this reality game show.

Donny, a man of the cloth looking for companionship, gravitates towards Carol, a homely widow, as they are roughly the same age and thus have a lot more in common and seem pleased with each other’s company.

Freddy, is 25 year old and a player. His charm and aesthetic physique grab the attention of twenty-somethings Claire and Kirsty, and the three find joy in one another’s company. A LOT of joy.

Kirsty comes off as the a somewhat shallow and arrogant… person… bitch. She’s a bitch. That’s the character. And Claire is the more sexually curious delicate young woman, who’s down for almost anything, but has a kind and harmless attitude. Freddy is still an asshole.

The main production team on set, comprised of Patricia, sound-guy Simon and the cameraman, played by, Sophie Atkinson, Simon Berry and off-screen Jackson Batchelor are manipulating our participants in order to boost the drama and the ratings.

Things seem normal at first, as goes for reality shows, yet slowly escalate to darker places as the plot progresses and things go from bad to worse.

In a 90-minute horror-thriller, Jessica and Sam give us a story loaded with invaluable elements; Dynamic between people of vastly different generations, commentary on the need for love and connection, sexual curiosity, sexual promiscuity of today’s generation.

Harsh social commentary on so-called ‘Reality Entertainment’, harsh social commentary on people’s deceptive nature which allows them to edit out their dark side when presenting themselves to the world, the lack of respect the young generation have for the older generation that came before them… and more.

Our characters are very different from one another and it is interesting to see how their different values are challenged when they collide.

We all have our own personal perspective on the world, so it is often hard to look at a situation without judgment, but still, looking at this type of story, while momentarily detaching myself from specific plot twists, allows to examine the narrative of Human nature in a fairly interesting way.

It isn’t something that hasn’t been done before in cinema, but I can imagine it isn’t easy to make it an interesting display, however Jessica and Sam succeeded in conveying an intriguing story with interesting characters.

On the technical side of things. I don’t understand why sometimes nudity is shown so frequently and when it is not necessarily crucial to the story. I mean, the film has quite a few provocative scenes, showing a lot of flesh. It seems that certain elements are there just for shock value and I never really understood the need for that.

It is apparent that many scenes in the film were very hard to shoot and demanded a sense of vulnerability from our performers, while they still needed to stay convincing and remain true to their characters.

The main issues I had with the film, have to do with some improbabilities in the plot and some script decisions which I felt didn’t serve the story as well one would have hoped.

Having said that, Lonely Hearts is a gut-punching story and a decent feature film with multiple layers to it, as well as decent production value and convincing performances. The Trash Arts team should be commended for trying something and taking risks.

Lonely Hearts, Score a 7.5/10 on the Look at Me, I’m A Film Critic scale!
The film is scheduled for release on DVD in America and Canada on September 17th via Darkside Releasing, so stay tuned for further updates! Link to website included.

Thank you again to Angerman Distribution for sponsoring our show. I hope we won’t be looking for a new sponsor after this episode…

If you’d like to catch-up on our past reviews you can find them all on our website, as well as our reviews AND promos on our recently launched MyIndie Review Vlog Vimeo channel. Link included.

Until next time, keep supporting indie film. Watch, share, spread the word, my name is Asaf Angel, I thank you for tuning in to MyIndie Review Vlog. I’ll see you next Thursday! Actually, you’ll see me. But hopefully less of me… or will you??