KO Review Ally Was Screaming

Ally Was Screaming – Trailer from Perfect Pictures Inc on Vimeo.

This movie really got inside of my head. Maybe it was the all too familiar cityscapes of Calgary where it was filmed. Maybe it was the characters who seemed like so many people I have known. I don’t know, but I usually leave a day for digestion before I write my film reviews, and this time, it has been a couple. I watchedAlly Was Screamingand then when about my day, but somehow I woke up that night in a sweat from a nightmare that I was part of the plot of this film. IT was one of those dreams where you lie stiff for at least five minutes before you actually come to the realization it was just a dream.

Ally Was Screaming opens with a  funeral.  Two best friends, Seth (played byGiacomo Baessato) and Nole (played by Charlie Carrick)have a mutual girl friend Ally (played byArielle Rombough), who has just died. As they sort through her things with her sister Casey (played byCamille Sullivan), they find a winning lottery ticket – unclaimed and for a massive sum. Legally, Ally’s abusive ex-husband is entitled to the winnings but he’s in jail and the guys decide to keep the ticket out of his hands. There’s just one problem. The executor of Ally’s estate is her sister, Casey, who believes the right thing to do, is what Ally left in her will, and give the winnings to the ex-husband. Seth and Nole come up with multiple scenarios of how to change this outcome, some of which are quite unorthodox…

For me, this film falls into the psychological thriller category.Ally Was Screamingwas not gory and did not exactly make me sit on the edge of my seat, but it allowed my mind to wander to places I did not feel comfortable about. Like the television series Dexter, as a viewer you begin to symapthize with a chacater out of your comfort zone.  The proposed scenarios that Seth and Nole come up with to avoid giving the lottery winnings to Ally’s ex-husband haunted my dreams. I rarely see films that stick in my head for longer than the running screen time these days, and this one really did it. The acting was fantastic, the character development strong, and the flashbacks were seamlessly inserted into the story. It was a very easy watch.

See Ally Was Screamingat The Metro Film Society in Edmonton screening on November 13, 2015  and the Globe Cinema in Calgary on November 16, 2015.

All photos courtesy of PACIFIC NORTHWEST PICTURES