Movie Review: BnB Hell (2017)
BNB Hell is a horror film from director Andrew Jordan, and is his directorial debut. It’s about a girl named Willa (Kimberly Woods) who is looking for her sister, who had gone missing a month earlier and traces her steps to a cheap Bed and Breakfast place. She meets a woman there nicknamed “Mommy”, and another guest who she becomes friends with. She finds a GoPro camera that is used by houseguests to make vlogs or just film themselves doing anything from just hanging out to some kinky stuff. She also finds an entire box of memory cards, and starts watching them all in hopes to find clues about her sister’s disappearance, and finds a lot more than just clues.
It seems like they had a pretty good idea early on about where they wanted to end up with this film, and there are some nice spooky moments peppered in here and there throughout, but it then sort of changes course at some point. Also, some of the actions taken by the characters didn’t make sense given the context of some scenes, and the dialogue was a bit spotty at times and didn’t seem natural. Even the reveal toward the end was interesting but didn’t seem to make much sense given the actions and scenes leading up to it in the rest of the film.
While some of the writing needed a bit of extra attention, the production of rest the film really shines. The cinematography and overall production are great in this film. There weren’t any real noticeable issues with the camerawork, which is pretty good considering they used footage from the GoPro mixed in with the film, and there were some really nice shots in some of the scenes. Kudos to Nick Fontenette and the camera crew there. For an indie film, they did a great job. The sound was pretty good as well and really helped to build tension and atmosphere in the right places. Kimberly Woods, and the rest of the cast also did a good job in the acting department, which is crucial in indie productions.
To sum this film up, I would say that the only thing that held it back was the writing, but not all of it. It seems like it started off as a supernatural film, and then decided to be something else entirely midway through the film. If they had been consistent with the direction the film was going in early on, it could have been pretty great. It was actress Andrea Harrison’s writing debut, and it was a good effort, but I think the finished product should have been gone over a couple more times before filming. As far as the overall film itself is concerned, everyone involved did a great job making it.
This is a nice indie production overall, though, and we recommend giving it a watch. We hope to see more films from Lawrence Adisa Films in the future. BNB Hell will be available on iTunes, Amazon, Google Play and more on June 15th.
