2015 October Horror Challenge #49 "Duress"

I really liked this movie, but as often happens in these cases, i seem to be the inly person who liked it, and there are three complaints in particular lodged against this movie that I'd like to address here, because the reviews for this movie said some very specific things about it that intrigued me.  First, they said the acting from the leads was bad.  Sakis Rouvas plays one of the keads, and I don't agree that he's terrible.  I mean, he kind of falters a little at the end of the movie, but I blame that more on the 5565456 paragraph long speech he has to give than on his acting ability or lack thereof.  I'm really easily annoyed by terrible acting and in particular by stilted line delivery, and I don't think he had that problem.  Honestly, I've noticed that when an actor has a thick accent, people seem more likely to say that actor is bad, but I don't agree.  He tends to pronounce words very precisely, but he's not a bad actor.  His role is pretty deluverate, and it requires him to give some long soeeches, but I think he does it pretty well, and I've seen a LOT of movies and therefore a LOT of bad acting.  I just don't think I saw it here.

The other lead is played by Martin Donavan, and a lot of people said he was the worst actor in this movie (rude).  Now I've seen him in a lot of things, and I've gotta say, I don't think it's bad acting, I think that's just how he's playing the character.  The guy had to say a lot of things in order to play along with the creepy killer who's stalking him, and I think he's just saying what he has to say most of the time, not putting feeling into it, and u think that's what people are reading as bad acting.  When he really does care and feel emotion, I think he does it well.  The third lead is Ariel Winter, and I don't think she's bad at all.  In fact, for being as young as she is and tackling a role that is as difficult as this had to be, I think she does a damn good job.

The third thing, and more than one person said it, and what's funny is I think some said it ad an insult but some said it as a compliment, is that the ending was really subversive.  That's a REALLY specific word to use, and I was excited to see the end and find out if it was as subversive as people thought.  Maybe it's because I'm fucked uo, but my mind went to WAY worse things than what wound up being the twist at the end of this movie, but it was still pretty good and I can see why people would call it "subversive."  Other than requiring the bad guy to recite a wall of text, the ending worked pretty well for me, and it wound up elevating my opinion of the rest of the movie.  It's not perfect by any means, it does kind of drag along a bit, even for such a short running time, but I definitely think it's better than people make it out to be.