Water's Edge

Rating:
Summary: Promise of a STELLAR beginning and premise... got away
Review: I purchased this DVD for one reason. CHANDRA WEST. I have a knack for noticing future talent. Long before everybody knew who Naomi Watts was, I was a huge fan. Long before everybody knew who Kate Beckinsale was, I was a fan.

The same goes for Chandra (Puppet Master 4&5, Night Terrors, Something More & The Salton Sea). As of today, her most noteable movie was The Salton Sea, and in that, she had a tiny tiny role, delegated only to FLASHBACKS!!

Finally, in WATER'S EDGE, she gets a starring role and shows how good of an actress she can be and has always been. In Water's Edge, she has some very meaty and dramatic moments. Most noteably, a very gut churning scene that involves a shotgun and a firepoker.

Okay... enough about Chandra... now, what I thought about the movie.

WATER'S EDGE starts out quietly when our main characters Robert (Nathan Fillion) and Molly (Chandra West) move to a quiet little town into a very modest log cabin, because they need a change of pace, to get away from the memory of their daughters drowning death, to write a book and they're broke.

We quickly learn that all's not kosher in this family. Depression plagues Molly and their relationship is hanging on by a very thin emotional thread.

That being said, I won't give away anything else, but I will say that the movie starts off EXCELLENTLY. Things start to happen and you don't see them coming. The events are unique, challenging and pose a very very good premise or dilemma for our characters to deal with.

Our characters find themselves in a very unexpected, complex, dangerous and deadly situation. Not to mention, their harboring a young seductive girl named Rae (Emmanuelle Vaugier) from the same dangers.

Everything builds as any good movie would. The tension is good. The dilemma our characters face is complex and intelligent enough to lock you in, and all of a sudden the movie sort of becomes... typical.

Would could have been a really really good LOW BUDGET movie, just becomes another movie because at the halfway point, the movie stopped growing, the story lost its creativity and ended the same way most movies of this sort end.

Although the casing Director's did have the keen insight of casting Chandra West in a leading role. So, the movie only gets 3 stars (could have been 4 stars had it finished the way it started), and I'll throw in an extra star for the Chandra factor.