Wrong Place, Wrong Time – review

Director: Justin Price

Release date: 2021

Contains spoilers

Action heist film meets vampires in a film that doesn’t contain the heist – honest. This is one of those low budget efforts where the director is also the producer, the screenwriter, as well as the cinematographer and, as such, becomes an abject lesson in why these roles should, often, be fulfilled by separate people. It’s all a matter of checks and balances on the artistic process, the ability to look at the roles independently and as director, for instance, see where there is a script issue and get a rewrite.

Nevertheless, we are where we are, so let’s see what we’ve got.

gunfight

We start off in a gun battle between masked robbers using sub-machine guns and FBI and SWAT. This is the nearest we get to a heist (though this is, we discover, the escape from the mini-heist to enable the main heist). The gunfight seems visceral enough, practical effects used helps, but its not that exciting; the number of law enforcement low and both sides as accurate as… well lets just say a lot of ammo is spent before the crew, who are mostly in the open, take the cops out. There are odd moments too, a bystanding mother has her head blown off, covering her young son in blood. Leader of the crew Solomon (Alex Ryan Brown) takes his mask off and delays the getaway in order to give him a pep talk.

Solomon and Sage

But they do make their escape, going to the back of the building (I guess) to pick up another crew member Gabriel (Mike Markoff). He is watching a security guard (Orvalle Jr.) who is injured and, just before they get to him, kills the man in cold blood. When he gets a querying look from a crew member, he says the guard had reached for a weapon. It is obvious that his holster is empty... So let’s meet the rest of the crew – there is Sage (Franziska Schissler), Solomon’s sister, Kira (Olivia Rivera) and James (Chase Garland). The place they have just ripped off is a cartel facility and James whines that the take is low. Solomon shows codes he retrieved – that was the true goal, they steal a data stick the next day and they’ll have billions.

finding captives

So the film gives us a little background on the characters curtesy of James who rats them out and hands files on them to the cartel – except for Gabriel as he can’t get a dossier together on him and describes him as a ghost. From this we jump to after the proper heist (which we never see), they are trying to get away but Gabriel is mortally wounded and so they pull into a remote house and home invade. When they search the house, they discover a woman and her daughter, hands tied and feet chained, and sitting silently in the kitchen. Sage finds a tracker on the car (so they know they’ve been ratted out), they have two hostages from the heist – one killed straight off the bat and the other, a young woman, kept as insurance. The daughter screams at this and manages to bite Solomon’s arm before she is subdued and the pair are put in a closet. Then the owner of the house, Luther (Timothy McKinney), gets home and guess what he is…

manbat form

So, nonsensical things happen. Kira is sent into the garage to look for a car – with Luther. The garage is huge and filled with loads of vehicles (most of which didn’t look roadworthy). He quickly tears her face off and rips her spine out, but no one seems to bother looking for her – there is a mention of she should be back and that’s it. The data stick is in a pendant that seems to have belonged to Luther (or his past love) – that was a coincidence that was poor and was then not explored in detail. Gabriel has scars and the mother has identical ones – so he is somehow connected and (without being visited by a vampire) turns when he dies, which made no sense. Kidnapped young woman knows tales of these creatures from Serbia and is more than she seems – again it seemed too contrived.

staked

The lore we get mentions Babaroga – a Serbian version of Baba Yaga, but Luther is no ‘old woman with horns’ though he does have a man-bat form and can fly. However, in this Babaroga are described as “Creatures who feasted off the livestock” who after time became Daya or “The devil of three faces.” This was relayed by the young woman’s grandmother to her, who also said that they are always men and the condition is punishment for wickedness. Sunlight, garlic and stakes are mentioned (and Gabriel is killed with a table leg and melts with what I described, as I took notes, as “a wibbly wobbly sound effect”). They cast no reflection and a bite can turn a victim into a familiar – referred to as a ghoul.

assailant not reflected

The story jumped around, aspects (as mentioned) were contrived (and unnecessarily so, as they were in the ‘Wrong Place, Wrong Time’, as the title states, the tying of Gabriel and Sage to the vampires was unnecessarily unwieldly) and others made little sense. We never got enough character development to give a monkey’s about them and the tension was not built as it should have been. The acting wasn’t great and so, again, the viewer has no sympathy and there wasn’t the emoting needed to build into the missing tension – Sage in a car being attacked by man-bat Luther and him climbing through the front, whilst she tried desperately to get out, could have been a heart pounding moment but was simply pedestrian.

Not great, but the practical effects worked well for the budget. 2.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK