TORN HEARTS (2022)

Studio:     Blumhouse/Epix
Director:    Brea Grant
Writer:     Rachel Koller Croft
Producer:  Paige Pemberton, Paul B. Uddo
Stars:     Katey Sagal, Abby Quinn, Alexxis Lemire, Joshua Leonard, Shiloh Fernandez

Review Score:

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Summary:

To take their music to the next level, an aspiring country duo tracks down their reclusive idol only to discover she may be dangerously delusional.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Best friends Jordan Wilder and Leigh Blackhouse perform as country music duo Torn Hearts at a Nashville club. After their show, band manager Richie Rowley Jones, who is also Leigh’s boyfriend, introduces Jordan and Leigh to country star Caleb Crawford in hopes of getting them to open his upcoming tour. Jordan ends up going home with Caleb for a one-night stand.

Jordan notices a photograph of Caleb with country music legend Harper Dutchess, who became a recluse following the tragic death of her sister Hope, who was the other half of their Dutchess Sisters duo. Caleb mentions he was supposed to record a duet with Harper, but she called off the project. Although Caleb warns that something is off about Harper, Jordan gets the idea that she and Leigh may be able to record with her since they are a female duo like the Dutchess Sisters.

Having obtained her address from Caleb, Jordan convinces Leigh that meeting Harper could be their big break. Following an awkward conversation over a callbox, Harper invites the two of them inside her rundown mansion in a remote location.

Over the course of their subsequent discussions, Harper comes to see herself in Jordan while similarly seeing her sister Hope in Leigh. While insisting that the girls drink alcohol with her, Harper uses psychology to play up the rivalry between Jordan and Leigh. Harper eventually agrees to play music with the two of them, although they are both alarmed by Harper’s strange behavior, which includes suddenly smashing a guitar.

Jordan and Leigh spend the night after getting blackout drunk with Harper. Both women wake up the next morning to find themselves dressed in old Dutchess Sisters merch. Through a keyhole, Jordan spies Harper talking to an invisible person.

Sensing something strange, Jordan proposes that she and Leigh leave. However, after throwing a tantrum over breakfast, Harper continues to hang the promise of recording a song with her over the duo’s head to compel them to stay.

Harper gets Jordan and Leigh drunk again. Harper continues deepening the divide between the two friends by exploiting their drastically different opinions about Leigh’s relationship with their manager Richie. Harper then convinces the two women to vent their frustrations by violently fighting with each other.

Richie arrives at the mansion looking for Jordan and Leigh. Claiming it’s because Jordan doesn’t like Richie anyway, Harper locks Jordan in the basement before going upstairs to talk to Richie with just Leigh.

Jordan discovers a secret room dedicated to Harper’s sister Hope hidden behind a bookcase. Among the mementos, Jordan finds jars containing severed body parts collected from Hope. Jordan uses Hope’s severed finger to open an electronic lock that frees her from the basement.

From outside the living room, Jordan overhears Richie plotting with the other two women to make a new duo out of Leigh and Harper, which would leave Jordan in the lurch. When Leigh goes to the kitchen, Jordan confronts her and tries explaining what she found in the basement, but Leigh refuses to listen. Meanwhile, Harper suddenly stabs Richie to death.

Harper collects the two women and together they record the last song that Hope wrote. Afterward, Harper takes Jordan and Leigh to her bedroom where she has them put on makeup and stage outfits. Jordan observes Harper saying “almost there” to a photograph of Hope.

Jordan and Leigh resume arguing contentiously. Harper states her belief that Hope brought the duo to her so Harper could have a shot at redemption by “evening things out.” Harper suddenly terrorizes Jordan and Leigh with a shotgun, prompting them to flee back to the basement where they collect pistols that Jordan discovered earlier. On the way, Jordan and Leigh stumble upon Richie’s dead body.

Harper hallucinates hearing and seeing Hope. Jordan and Leigh use the distraction to knock Harper to the floor. With both girls hesitant to shoot their idol, the standoff affords Harper a moment to tell them that they need to help her “atone.”

Harper finally confesses that she killed Hope because her sister was threatening to go solo. Hope’s tragic death, which was covered up as a suicide, sent record sales soaring. Harper explains that if Leigh kills both her and Jordan, Harper will have vicariously repaid her debt to her sister and Leigh will have an incredible story to launch her solo career.

Jordan shoots Harper before she can fire her shotgun, but Leigh shoots Jordan in her stomach. As Jordan bleeds out, Leigh becomes awestruck by the idea of surviving multiple murders to become a music superstar. Leigh starts strutting away, but Jordan recovers Harper’s shotgun and uses it to kill Leigh. Jordan then drops dead. Caleb Crawford ends up exploiting his connection to the tragedy to become even more successful.

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Review:

Jordan and Leigh are more than best friends. They’re also the band Torn Hearts. They think they have what it takes to become the next big thing in country music. Their manager Richie, who does double duty as Leigh’s boyfriend, thinks so too. That’s why he invited country superstar Caleb Crawford to see the duo play at a Nashville nightclub. Richie hopes Caleb will want Torn Hearts for his upcoming tour’s opening act, and they’ll finally have that big break they’ve been hungering for.

Turns out Caleb’s management only wants men for his show, but Jordan doesn’t learn this until after their one-night stand. As an unexpected consolation for having misspent her evening, Jordan spies a photo of Caleb with reclusive legend Harper Dutchess, one half of a singing siblings duo who became a recluse following the tragic death of her sister Hope. Caleb cryptically claims Harper isn’t the endearing icon everyone thinks she is. Jordan can’t hear his warning, however. She’s already thinking she and Leigh can do what Caleb couldn’t: convince Harper to come out of retirement and catapult two women into the spotlight with a collaboration.

It doesn’t take much convincing to get Leigh to come along on an impromptu trip to Harper’s isolated old mansion. Convincing Harper to give them the time of day, on the other hand, takes a lot more talking. Once she sees herself and her sister Hope reflected in the two friends though, Harper thinks she might be able to get something out of a partnership after all.

What follows next is a great deal of subtle and unsubtle psychological sabotage as Harper plies the starstruck duo with alcohol while playing up the simmering rivalry between them. Before she’s through with the two women, Harper is going to get Jordan and Leigh to go for each other’s throats, figuratively first and then quite literally. Meanwhile, Jordan and Leigh are stumbling into the center of a strange saga involving what really happened to Harper’s sister, and what deadliness Harper has cooking in her unhinged mind for an eerie encore.

To be honest, I didn’t expect much from “Torn Hearts.” As a made-for-Epix movie, the production shows all the expected frugality of a lower-budgeted Blumhouse release, shaved even slimmer due to coming out of their TV division. Of course this means a manageable story staged around the simplicity of three primary actors, one main location, and nothing too nutty on the shot list that would take more than one run-through to rehearse. “Torn Hearts” also comes colored with a light patina of campiness, some of it earned and some of it incidental, like an opening flashback featuring bouffant wigs seemingly ripped right off of Elvira’s dresser.

After I acclimated to the atmosphere, however, the leading ladies ended up opening the space with their performances, which subsequently roped me right in. I’d say Katey Sagal unsurprisingly steals every scene as Harper, except she isn’t stealing so much as taking what she’s rightfully entitled to. She’s Katey Sagal, nothing else needs to be said there.

Because they’re introduced with stereotypical traits throughout the first act, Jordan and Leigh take a little more getting used to. Abby Quinn and Alexxis Lemire get them there in short order though. Like Sagal, they fit their roles like snug gloves. I admit I was initially apprehensive that they and their characters were too average to make much of an impression. But Quinn eventually takes her seasoned smart mouth with a tough tomboy edge to new levels of nuance using streaks of proactive confidence and reactive confusion. Lemire complements her nicely as the “face” whose good looks seem to be her only notable attribute, until Leigh’s pretty exterior cracks to reveal conniving ambition underneath. Together, Quinn and Lemire make a powerful battery with the right voltage to absorb, charge, and redirect Sagal’s effortless onscreen energy.

“Torn Hearts” isn’t action-oriented at all, yet the pace still moves pretty well thanks to how Rachel Koller Croft’s rhythmic script is constructed and how the actors invest in those parts. The core cast consistently carries their conversations using underpinnings of tension and animosity to make such scenes more engaging than dialogue-driven drama usually is.

“Torn Hearts” hits a couple of kooky bumps, but I willingly suspended disbelief because director Brea Grant packages the film together to be an entertaining, if economic, low-calorie thriller regardless of everything else going on. Although it’s still a character study couched in a chamber play, “Torn Hearts” feels more focused and plays more traditionally than Grant’s previous film “12 Hour Shift” (review here), which seemed like an experimental actor’s workshop of limited appeal to broad audiences.

I’ve seen it said that “Torn Hearts” tells a parable about why you should never meet your heroes. I don’t think that’s the theme at all. Using an extreme illustration, “Torn Hearts” sends a message about the challenges of maintaining copacetic relationships with coworkers. Sometimes, you love each other, maybe to a fault. Other times, you can’t help but vent your frustrations in healthy and unhealthy ways. If that’s not something almost everyone can relate to, then they’re lucky for not having experience with a dysfunctional, and in this case deadly, family or friend dynamic.

Review Score: 70

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