Windsor Drive Movie Review

Allan is a retired mainstream (does that word even apply anymore?) journalist whose bylines traveled with him to six newspapers and a final resting place at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. In Da ’Burgh, he served as entertainment editor, features editor and closed out his career creating and directing the PG’s multimedia department. He once authored a horror blog titled “How Awful About Allan,” an homage to a little-known TV movie starring the original Norman Bates, i.e. Anthony Perkins. In an alternate universe, he played drums for a band that recorded two albums and even a single that popped up on a jukebox or two. And yes, he’s old enough to remember what a jukebox is. Uh, was.

So let’s imagine you go to film school, fall in love with, say, David Lynch, learn every trick in the book , hire a few pretty actors, write a gaggle of disconnected sentences, throw it all into a blender and push the button for puree.

What dribbles out is some slushy mess called Windsor Drive.

With all due respect, director Natalie Bible needs to step back and take a breath. This rancid concoction could have been so much more had she simply shown some restraint. I mean, seriously, this flick had to set some kind of record for gimmicks – close crops, quick cuts, flashbacks, shadow lighting, overlays, slow motion, fast motion, upside-down angles, fades, etc, etc, ETC!

Stay tuned for a positive comment or two (the most I can muster), but for now, let’s try to put this in context.

Windsor Drive purports to tell the story (sic) of an actor (River Miller, portrayed by Tommy O’Reilly) who suffers a loss that leaves him two bolts shy of deranged. He hangs around with a few people who add little more than good looks to bad dialogue. He rents a room from Ivy and Wulfric (Anna Biani and Kyle DuBois), has five-minute relationships with Brooke and June (Sammaire Armstrong and Mandy Musgrave), all while grieving the flashback-introduced Jordana (Jillian Murray).

I’d tell you more if there were more to tell. Those plot points (sic) go absolutely nowhere. There are no scares, no suspense … no sense whatsoever. If this were a swimming pool, you’d be mired in the shallows.

The sad thing is the director shows glimpses of technique and composition. The cinematography is slick if left to run amok. And the score – though a bit pretentious – caught my attention. Perhaps in time, Ms. Bible will earn more bouquets than brickbats. As it is, Windsor Drive is a disaster of Bible-cal proportions.

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