"To Jennifer" - A Review

I was recently shown a screener copy of indie film maker James Cullen Bressack’s new film “To Jennifer”, which is the first film to be shot entirely on the iPhone 5 and is being released in the US in October.

 

I had recently watched his film “Hate Crime”, which was a competently shot home invasion movie, so was intrigued at how this one would compare.

 

The plot for this film centres around a young college student, Joey (Chuck Pappas), who receives a rather cryptic text message on his phone from his girlfriend Jennifer (Jessica Cameron), which appears to have been intended for someone else.

 

Believing that she’s cheating on him, he flies back home, hoping to catch her in the act and confront her. He’s accompanied by his cousin Steve (played by director James Cullen Bressack) who he’s asked to make a video documentary of their trip, showing the hurt she’s putting him through and the lengths they’re going to, to catch her out.

 

But despite Steve and some friends trying to put him off and cheer him up, things just seem to go from bad to worse for him. Culminating in his confrontation with Jennifer, where we learn their relationship might not be as conventional as we were originally lead to believe.

 

Much like "Hate Crime", the film is shot from a first person perspective, though in this case from the viewpoint of Joey and Steve’s iPhones. However, I was sadly left feeling distinctly under whelmed by this one.

 

A lot of the films running time is spent showing Joey and his friends just sat around talking, drinking and getting high and as such, there seemed to be these really long periods where nothing much happened. The film started to drag for me and I actually started fast forwarding in places.

 

The film does hint along the way at what the real problem is with Joey’s relationship, which only becomes evident during the films finale (which I won’t spoil for you). But whilst this was kind of clever, I felt the story was far too slow for my liking, and in conclusion, I’ll simply say this really wasn’t my ‘cup of tea’ at all.

 

The film is being released to US DVD and on VOD October 15^th. There is also an official APP for the iPhone 5, including the full film through APPLE and ZOOVISION, which will be released shortly as well.

 

You can pre-order the US DVD at Amazon.com