Movie Review: CRAM

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer

Posted: March 17th, 2023 / 01:11 AM

Rating: Not Rated
Stars: John DiMino, Brandon E. Burton, Conrado Falco III, Carolina Đð, Jane Bradley
Writer: Abie Sidell
Director: Abie Sidell
Distributor: Terror Films
Release Date: March 17, 2023 (VOD, digital)

CRAM starts out with student Marc Lack (John DiMino) in the college library, desperately trying to complete a paper overnight. He hasn’t read the relevant book and doesn’t have any thoughts on the material.

Marc engages in a protracted effort to convince his friend Alice (Carolina Đð) to let him use her paper so he won’t have to write his own. When Alice understandably refuses, Marc winds up alone in the library and eventually passes out in front of his laptop.

When he wakes up, if indeed that’s what’s happened, Marc experiences a journey down the rabbit hole. Either he’s having a nightmare based on his anxieties about not passing his course and being a crummy academician (which seems likely), or he’s become unstuck from reality.

Writer/director Abie Sidell does a great, naturalistic job with DiMino, Đð, and Conrado Falco III as their pal Gonzalo in the early scenes. The squabbling sounds lifelike.

The scenes in the darkened stacks, when Marc is alone in the library, are pleasingly eerie. But from here, CRAM starts to feel more like a visually dramatized thesis about subconscious manifestations of anxiety than a movie meant for an audience trying to follow along.

The set pieces are individually acceptable, but as they continue, they don’t feel like they’re leading into one another or adding up. By the time we encounter an ALICE IN WONDERLAND-type character, who looks like he stepped out of a Tenniel illustration, we can’t determine how much weight he carries.

CRAM does have the virtue of brevity, clocking in at forty-four minutes. Given this fact, it’s an achievement that it has achieved distribution. It’s a film about college fears that has the essence of a college project. It seems likely to resonate most with those who are either still in the world of academia, or still shudder at the memories.

Follow us on Twitter at ASSIGNMENT X
Like us on Facebook at ASSIGNMENT X

Latest Buzz

Study early or have this nightmare

Article Source: Assignment X
Article: Movie Review: CRAM

Related

Related Posts:

Leave a Comment

Assignment X Poll

Newsletter subscription status