Flytrap

Misguided and utterly ineffective, Flytrap follows Jeremy Crutchley’s Jimmy as he takes refuge in the home of a mysterious woman (Gabrielle Stone’s Ginger) and subsequently finds himself held hostage by said woman and her cohorts. Filmmaker Stephen David Brooks delivers a sluggish and progressively interminable drama that strikes all the wrong notes virtually from the get-go, as Flytrap kicks off with an unconvincing (and entirely silly) opening stretch revolving around the initial encounter between Crutchley and Stone’s respective characters – with Ginger’s oddball behavior, which eventually does make sense, admittedly, lending the proceedings the feel of an aggressively (and punishingly) avant-garde bit of experimentalism. The movie, beyond that point, segues into an uneventful midsection that couldn’t possibly be less interesting and more tedious, as Brooks, constrained by an obviously small budget, sets the bulk of the proceedings within a dimly-lit bedroom and devotes the lion’s share of screentime to Jimmy and Ginger’s often thunderously dull conversations. By the time the hopelessly anticlimactic final stretch rolls around, Flytrap has certainly confirmed its place as a thoroughly worthless indie that probably would’ve worn out its welcome as a five-minute short. (It feels, as a full-length feature, absolutely endless.)

no stars out of ****