Missionary, 2013.
Directed by Anthony DiBlasi.
Starring Dawn Olivieri, Mitch Ryan, Kip Pardue, Connor Christie and Jordon Woods-Robinson.
SYNOPSIS:
A Mormon becomes obsessed with a woman and her child, and he’ll stop at nothing to be with her forever.
Mitch Ryan plays Kevin Brock, a man with a troubled past who has found hope in the Mormon religion in this Godsploitation thriller from Dread director Anthony DiBlassi. Missionary is a movie that has its moments and at times looks to be a great film, but it doesn’t quite hit every note and it ends up just being just a slightly above average affair.
Promised as “Jesus Christ of Splatterday Saints”, the first thing to complain about Missionary is that it’s actually pretty tame. It’s hype and promotion damages the movie by promising things it doesn’t deliver on. It’s more about the character and just what drives him to be the man that he is, much like the 2009 remake of The Stepfather. But while that movie degenerated into a typical slasher movie, Missionary remains grounded in the rules it’s set up for itself and it does benefit from that.
However, Missionary doesn’t make the most of its Mormon lead character gimmick. This isn’t like Matt Stone and Trey Parker’s Orgazmo (or Book of Mormon for that matter) in which they dissect what makes them the people they are and how the Mormon teachings shape their lives, Missionary would have been exactly the same if Brock was a devout Christian, Jew or Jedi.
Ryan is very good in his role as he gets the balance between sweet and sadistic just right, but the script never truly lets him explore the character fully. At a certain point the film grinds to a halt so we can get some forced exposition scenes to explain his origin story which feel incredibly perfunctory. Not only that, but it features a character who claims that support groups suggest you get guns and find out how to kill people legally instead of filing a restraining order. I’m not claiming to be an expert on the subject, but something doesn’t quite sit right about that claim.
Likewise with Ryan, Dawn Olivieri is great as Katherine, whose lust gets the better of her and she ends up in this deadly cat and mouse game. A better script would have probably given her a bit more character other than ‘lonely mother who just needed a man to be happy’, but Olivieri does the best with what she’s given and her character is nice and hardworking enough that you will side with her as the movie progresses.
But even with two good central performances, Missionary just can’t get out of being a mundane movie. There is a great film in there somewhere, but DiBlassi can’t quite find it and what we’re left with is a fairly forgettable movie experience. It’s not terrible, but it’s not good either. Another round draft might have stepped the film up to another level but as it is, Missionary is an average movie. Nothing to hate, but nothing to write home about either.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Luke Owen is one of Flickering Myth’s co-editors and the host of Flickering Myth’s Podcast Network. You can follow him on Twitter @LukeWritesStuff.
Originally published August 27, 2013. Updated November 7, 2019.
