Studio: Shout Studios
Director: Shane Dax Taylor
Writer: Shane Dax Taylor
Producer: Steven Schneider, Shane Dax Taylor, Kenneth Burke
Stars: Bella Thorne, Alyvia Alyn Lind, Skyler Samuels, Mircea Monroe, Austin Nichols
Review Score:
Summary:
Masked art thieves plot to rob a wealthy couple’s mansion, but a young girl home alone with her nanny complicates their plan.
Review:
Whenever I wind up watching a generic thriller, my wandering mind will entertain itself by wondering what convinced the moneymen to pony up production bucks to begin with. It’s not extraordinarily difficult to picture what probably happened here with “Masquerade.” Someone, presumably writer/director Shane Dax Taylor, pitched a to-the-point plot that only needed two locations and a half-dozen actors. Enticed by how relatively simple it would be to shoot this setup, the person signing paychecks then challenged, “Okay, but why this one out of the umpteen similar suspense stories already out there?”
Taylor likely explained how seemingly ordinary events would lead up to a “Saw”-style twist, complete with a flashback montage of all the misdirects that were actually clues to the big secret. In his imagination, the audience would be astonished. Maybe the response went, “Eh, good enough. So who’s in it?”
“Bella Thorne,” said someone. “Sure, she’s past the promise of being this decade’s MTV “It” girl, but she’s not yet the new Mena Suvari either. She can still take a few more projects of questionable caliber before being anointed as the next patron saint of cable TV MOWs.” For a second time, the moneyman muttered, “Eh, good enough.”
Armed with a notable name to go with a quick 10-day shooting schedule, off everyone went to make a movie before anyone could clarify exactly how the twist would be pulled off or precisely how Thorne would be used. I suspect if they could foresee the sloppy staging, or that Thorne wouldn’t have the most minutes and would be hidden behind a fencing mask for many of them, someone with second thoughts would have shouted, “Not so fast!”
I usually prefer to be as vague as possible, or to not resort to spoilers in the first place. But because “Masquerade” depends on its twist to differentiate it from every other home invasion thriller ever made, and because that reveal gets bungled so spectacularly, it has to be identified in detail to explain why the movie never works at all.
MAJOR SPOILERS
Remember that famous sequence in “Silence of the Lambs” where Jonathan Demme expertly edits between two sequences to make it seem like Clarice Starling and the FBI are about to bust down Buffalo Bill’s door together, except it turns out they’re actually in separate places and Starling ends up all alone with the killer? “Masquerade” tries a like-minded trick, yet achieves far less successful results.
“Masquerade’s” parallel plotlines are meant to look like they’re happening concurrently, although they really take place about 15+ years apart. Bella Thorne plays Rose, an apparent art thief plotting with unknown persons to steal paintings from a wealthy husband and wife. While Rose distracts the couple at a party, two other thieves rob the house, and run into complications when they come across the couple’s young daughter. Or so it seems.
When the two threads finally link in the final few minutes, we find out Rose is also the little girl. One of the thieves, Daniel, murdered her parents as well as her nanny, then left her for dead and made off with the paintings. He went on to become a big time art dealer while Rose spent years setting up an elaborate revenge scheme to do the same thing to Daniel’s family that he did to hers. You’re supposed to think she’s working with the two thieves terrorizing the little girl when she’s really working with the sister of the murdered nanny in another soap opera swerve that’s too ridiculous to be realistic.
On paper, this sounds like a masterful cinematic illusion that would make M. Night Shyamalan drool. If it can be pulled off, which “Masquerade” can’t.
The movie has to keep these separate plates spinning for so long that it becomes painfully obvious “Masquerade” has a rabbit in its hat because the rabbit won’t stop squirming. You may not guess that Rose and the little girl are the same person. But cuts are so conspicuously designed that only two possibilities are in play. Either the filmmakers are piss poor at establishing relative space between characters on two lines of simultaneous action, or else they’re clearly trying, and failing, to hide the fact that something else is going on.
It’s like watching “The Sixth Sense” and having your Spider-Sense tingle when you realize absolutely no one is talking to Bruce Willis except Haley Joel Osment. Here’s a prime example:
After Rose drops off Daniel and his wife Olivia at their mansion, the couple discovers the power is out and their security system is disabled. Keep in mind, they’re millionaires prone to robbery and they left their own daughter home alone with her nanny, yet neither of them thinks anything could be amiss. When they hop the fence and enter the home, Daniel casually goes to check the breaker after pausing to kiss his wife. Olivia goes to the kitchen where she’s eventually knocked unconscious from behind. When Daniel returns, to now find his wife nowhere to be found, the first thing he does is clean up the drink she spilled on the floor when she was attacked.
It’s hard enough to suspend disbelief that parents wouldn’t check on their child’s wellbeing immediately upon returning home from a night out, let alone under these suspicious circumstances. It’s another thing for their lack of concern to carry on for nearly 20 minutes while “Masquerade” jumps between mom and dad milling about and the little girl hiding from two deadly intruders.
At the same time, additional questions arise regarding whether the people who built this house were the same time lords who designed Doctor Who’s TARDIS. “Masquerade’s” mansion is one of those movie locations that impossibly balloons to a size bigger than Wyoming whenever the script needs a serendipitous savior for lazy staging. Even when they’re staring right at her as she closes a door on them, the thieves somehow can’t ever find the little girl. And whenever one of the thieves is featured in frame, the ones offscreen are presumably frozen in ice somewhere since we see people reacting to sounds, yet no one ever comes across any of the other people who are supposedly in the same place.
I’m not mad at “Masquerade” for breaking both legs while trying to stick the landing. Its low score is earned because even independent of the rusty hook it hinges on, it’s just plain dull. Masked thieves creeping around rooms, pulling out tools, pulling paintings off walls, and cutaways to the girl hiding with a hand over her mouth make up a majority of the runtime. Meanwhile, Bella Thorne spends her scenes either behind one of those masks or behind the wheel playing chauffeur to the couple. Your boredom will eliminate any investment in the outcome well before the premise finally pays off.
Not for nothing, beats unrelated to keeping the twist hidden don’t make sense either. Why would rich people need a random waitress to drive them home? And how shoddy was the workmanship on their massive mansion that a 70-pound girl could rip right through the attic floor while tiptoeing? They ought to ask the contractor for their money back. Given where Daniel and his wife end up though, there’s about as much chance of that happening as there is of “Masquerade” giving me my money back too.
Review Score: 35
If you want to see impossible amounts of blood explode crimson colors like the world’s worst version of a gender reveal, well, “Abigail” at least has that.