The Ravine reveals itself to be approximately four different movies by the time the story reaches its laborious and manipulative conclusion. At first, writer/director Keoni Waxman’s film seems to be a murder-suicide tale, in which a woman and her son were found dead at the hands of their husband/father, who then took his own life. The man didn’t just take his life, by the way. He used a shotgun on himself while simultaneously driving his car from a cliff and into the ravine below (hence the title), trusting physics to do most of the work for him. The central question of the screenplay is why this occurred to be such a seemingly normal and upbeat family.
In the role of the audience’s proxy, Waxman has placed the mystery in the laps of those closest to the man who killed his wife and their son before committing suicide. Those people are Mitch (Eric Dane) and Carolyn (Teri Polo), each of whom – in addition to their sons – are left with the aftermath of a brutal crime and the lack of closure presented by the inability to hold anyone accountable. Why did Danny (Peter Facinelli) commit the horrible act that he did, and why was he so desperate to evade accountability for it? Somehow, given the answers we receive, the second question becomes even more important as Waxman’s priorities shift, from searching for answers within a horrible tragedy to searching for a second culprit in the crime.
It seems that Danny may have been caught up in some sort of scheme that involves money-skimming and extortion, as well as the recent firing of an employee at his workplace. The details of the plot herein are too ludicrous and labyrinthine to be worthy of spoiling, really, but it’s at this point when all the good will – the fine performances from Dane and Polo, for instance – essentially disappears. Each development in the investigation into the apparent murder-suicide wants to muddy and to complicate our perception of the central individual involved in the crime, yet it all feels like a lot of cheap wheel-spinning to get us to the real, if unexpected, reason for the telling of this story.
That would be to proselytize the word of God to the viewers. Yes, one might be surprised to read those words after the above description of the story. Waxman, though, really is out here to frame the tale of murder, suicide, financial fraud and probably several other crimes related to events that should not be revealed here as one in which the most important consideration is whether the souls of Danny, his wife Rachel (Cynthia Evans) and their biological son (an adopted daughter is sort of forgotten by the movie until we need to see her become upset about the events) were saved before death. To that end, the film employs the old trope of a Black woman, named Joanna (Leslie Uggams), whose clairvoyance might offer closure.
The Ravine is a film without any idea how to handle these wild turns from unthinkable tragedy to deep sorrow to hope in prayer and faith. The solution for its makers, it seems, is not to make that choice at all. The result borders on offensive, which is even less forgivable than the pedestrian filmmaking that overtakes every idea on display.
Photo courtesy of Cinedigm
The post The Ravine appeared first on Spectrum Culture.