SYNOPSIS
‘They brutalized his brother who committed suicide. Now he’s back to exact revenge, and settle some old scores.
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT
Dark Endings is a short film that is also a template for a feature film project. To this end the scenes are short but impactful and move the story forward, and the dialogue and story line provide clues on the back story and prior relationships and complex motivations and inter-relationships of the characters.
The film is a cross-genre that blends the crime-thriller-violence with an undercurrent of racialized violence, and told from the ethnic characters’ POV.
The character of Casanova is perhaps the most complex, a young mob-prince with a chip on his shoulder and something to prove: he goes way beyond his mob-boss mother’s command and sadistically rapes his sister’s boyfriend. Casanova’s rage is partly motivated by the ethnicity of his victim and his brother, and the past relationship history between the victim’s brother and his mother. The mob-boss mother is perhaps motivated by her own past relationship in ordering the break-up. This past relationship may also explain the protagonist’s choice in his vengeance to kill the daughter and leave the mother alive, so as to more deeply hurt the mother.
The violent rape and revenge scenes are visceral without being gratuitous and reflect the intensity and motivating emotions of the perpetrators and the victims. The fight scenes where the brother inflicts revenge are choreographed with a brutal military variation of combat jiu-jitsu techniques, which reflects the brother-character’s implied back story.
The musical score reflects the emotional intensity of the characters and the dangerous events and outcomes, as well as the poignancy of the characters. The finale of the film reflects the poignancy of the protagonist who will live with the memory of the innocent woman he killed to exact revenge on her mother.