katrinaolson.ca - KO Review of Ally Was Screaming

Posted on Monday, November 09, 2015 at 02:00 PM

KO Review: Ally Was Screaming

Review by Katrina Olson-Mottahed x CalgaryMovies.com

This movie really got inside of my head. Maybe it was the all too familiar cityscapes of Calgary where it was filmed. Maybe it was the characters who seemed like so many people I have known. I don’t know, but I usually leave a day for digestion before I write my film reviews, and this time, it has been a couple. I watched Ally Was Screaming and then went about my day, but somehow I woke up that night in a sweat from a nightmare, that I was part of the plot in this film. It was one of those dreams where you lie stiff for at least five minutes before you actually come to the realization it was just a dream.

Ally Was Screaming opens with a funeral. Two best friends, Seth (played by Giacomo Baessato) and Nole (played by Charlie Carrick) have a mutual girl friend Ally (played by Arielle Rombough), who has just died. As they sort through her things with her sister Casey (played by Camille Sullivan), they find a winning lottery ticket – unclaimed and for a massive sum. Legally, Ally’s abusive ex-husband is entitled to the winnings but he’s in jail and the guys decide to keep the ticket out of his hands. But there’s just one problem. The executor of Ally’s estate is her sister, Casey, who believes the right thing to do, is what Ally left in her will, and give the winnings to the ex-husband. Seth and Nole come up with multiple scenarios of how to change this outcome, some of which are quite unorthodox…

For me, this film falls into the psychological thriller category. Ally Was Screaming was not gory and did not exactly make me sit on the edge of my seat, but it allowed my mind to wander to places I did not feel comfortable about. Like the television series Dexter, as a viewer you begin to symapthize with a chacater out of your comfort zone. The proposed scenarios that Seth and Nole come up with to avoid giving the lottery winnings to Ally’s ex-husband haunted my dreams. I rarely see films that stick in my head for longer than the running screen time these days, and this one really did it. The acting was fantastic, the character development strong, and the flashbacks were seamlessly inserted into the story. It was a very easy watch.

See Ally Was Screaming at The Metro Film Society in Edmonton screening on November 13, 2015 @ 7:00 PM and the Globe Cinema in Calgary on November 16, 2015 @ 7:00 PM.

Calgary Showtimes: Ally Was Screaming >

All photos courtesy of PACIFIC NORTHWEST PICTURES.