Miss Meadows (UK Rating: 15)
Since returning to acting, Katie Holmes has been working consistently but, so far, she hasn’t chosen anything that’s going to put her in the big league, and the straight-to-DVD (and on-demand) Miss Meadows, which arrives in the UK on Monday, 27th July, certainly won’t help her cause.
The premise is that the prim and proper Miss Meadows (Holmes), a primary school teacher, has another life outside the classroom: she’s a vigilante, carrying a silver gun – no doubt it delivers a silver bullet as well! – in her neat little handbag. Not that anybody knows that to start with, yet when the local Sheriff (James Badge Dale) becomes involved with her, he realises that the description of the killer of at least three men is a little too close to home. As they are about to get married, it doesn’t bode well for the future.
The idea isn’t a bad one, as there’s more than enough potential for satire and/or dark comedy, but what writer/director Karen Leigh Hopkins doesn’t seem to realise is that having the idea is the easy bit. What’s important is that it’s executed properly, and this one is criminally wide of the mark, to the point of being distasteful.
Leave aside the fact that the film fails both as a dark comedy, a mild horror, or even a parody. There’s something far more worrying, and much more unpleasant, lurking underneath. Intentional or not, the film comes across as justifying Miss Meadows’ actions as a vigilante. “Nobody else is doing it!” she shrieks in defence of her actions, but, even worse, it makes little attempt to go inside her mind to understand her killing spree, other than to show a childhood trauma at one point, and to drop in a big fat clue that the mother she telephones at least once a day isn’t who she appears to be.
It’s superficial stuff and Katie Holmes’ performance matches it, keeping everything on the surface. James Badge Dale gets the sympathy vote, as he deserves much better than what he has to work with as the sheriff.
