The Ruse
What could have been a tidy little horror/thriller struggles for air with a surplus of exposition and explanation. Usually the best way to scare is to withhold.
The old saw on storytelling is “Show, don’t tell,” and this is especially true for movies. The best amount of exposition and explanation is the absolute least necessary to keep the audience tuned in and engaged.
Anytime you’ve got somebody onscreen essentially acting as a talking head, basically instructing the people watching what they saw and how they should feel about it, it’s death. “The Ruse,” what could have been a tidy little horror/thriller, is so weighed down with this stuff it struggles for air.
Usually the best way to scare is to withhold.
It stars Veronica Cartwright (best known as a crew member on “Alien”) as Olivia Stone, a once-famous orchestra director now laid low by old age and infirmity. She lies in a bed in her beautiful lakeside Colorado Springs house, making it as far as the patio but hardly ever outside.
She’s got COPD and needs constant oxygen to breathe, and has major OCD issues, especially about her stuff, insisting her water be delivered only in a certain coffee mug… and heaven forfend any of her little tchotchkes get moved.
“I’m a creature of habit,” she explains, and proves it by repeating this line often.
Not surprisingly, the home nurse aides assigned to her on a 24/7 hour basis tend not to last very long. Penny (Nicola Jeanette Silber), the smart and mouthy little girl who leaves nearby, informs the latest of them, Dale (Madelyn Dundon), that she’s the newest in a long string of nurses dismissed by Olivia, or run off with her demanding behavior.
Dale’s eager for the gig because she had a patient die on her last watch — not really her fault, but it’s left a black mark on her record. Never mind the previous nurse assigned to Olivia, Tracy (Kayleigh Ruller), apparently walked off the job without even telling anybody.
A first-person stalker-type opening scene suggests she got butchered, and eventually the cops, led by Detective Burke (Michael Bakkensen), start sniffing around for clues.
There’s also a pair of potential suspects in neighbor Tom (Michael Steger), Penny’s dad and a guy who just seems a little too insistent with his offers of help, and Jacob (T.C. Carter), the grocery delivery guy who has a bit of a pervy bent to him.
Now, that’s a decent set-up from writer/director Steven Mena. Dale walks in as the new fish, has to put up with Olivia’s borderline abusive behavior, plus the pressure of being under a dark cloud and taking over a job in less than ideal circumstances. Day after day, she starts to crack under the strain.
Most locals think the house is haunted, and Olivia adds to that with her constant references to her husband, Albert. He died years ago, but the way she talks it seems he’s still making regular visits — whether in person or some more ghostly form. It’s also possible, based on her ramblings and tendency to forget things, that dementia is an easier explanation.
I’ll leave it to you to discover the truth. Or rather, the last 15 minutes or so of the movie is essentially one long, tired soliloquy where what *actually* happened is explained to us in great detail, followed by a very tacked-on action ending.
It’s almost like somebody was reading the script and said, “This last bit with all the speechifying is kinda boring… shouldn’t we stick some violence in here so we can end with a bang?” It might be a cynical way to approach the material, but honestly I wish somebody had thought of it earlier.
The movie’s very well shot (cinematography by Cory Geryak) and the production values are solid for a low-budgeter. Dundon is empathetic in the lead role, a serious, well-meaning woman placed in extraordinary circumstances. Cartwright as Olivia is the most compelling figure, a strong brew of self-regard and self-pity. The scenes where she talks to Dale about her own life, having to make it as a woman in a male-dominated field and the sacrifices necessary, give their antagonistic relationship a poignant note.
There’s a good movie in here somewhere. Moviemaking really is just an exercise in show-and-tell, and finding the right balance between them.