Murder Made Easy is a fast paced, highly entertaining, wonderfully fresh take on the murder mystery sub genre — full of twists and surprises
Murder Made Easy is a 2017 film written by Tim Davis and directed by David Palamaro. It is, at its core, a horror/thriller, but there are many darkly comedic moments throughout its 75-minute runtime. Due to the movie being so short for a feature, it’s fast-paced and uses its time wisely.
Hosts Michael (Christopher Soren Kelly) and Joan (Jessica Graham) have several dinner guests over one night, and there are a number of deaths that pile up rapidly. Aesthetically speaking, Joan looks every bit the femme fatale: a tall, slender woman with pale skin, dark hair and a red dress.
The guests represent a swath of personality types: Marcus (Edmund Lupinski) is an older academic type with a background in theater, Cricket (Emilia Richeson) is an extreme hippie who’s into spiritualism, Damien (Daniel Ahearn) is a wannabe indie filmmaker and Angela (Sheila Cutchlow) is an author and psychoanalyst. The cast makes for a motley crew.
Each scene is set with a title card representing the course of the meal being had, which is a nice touch to the ambience of the movie. Roughly 38 minutes in there’s an “Intermission” title card; following that are some of the most interesting and creative shots in the whole film.
Throughout the film, the audience is nearly as in-the-dark as the characters. The tone goes back and forth between jocular and tense. There are a number of twists and turns that may make you question loyalties and motivations of different characters, and you may wonder where the plot is going at a certain point.
Murder Made Easy uses a number of horror and thriller tropes and references, including a reference to an Agatha Christie story, while still managing to feel like a fresh take on the murder mystery genre.
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