With You
A film by Jason Christensen
Low budget movies don't have to be a synonym for bad, tasteless or crappy entertainment. Casting a bunch of unknown actors in your low budget movie doesn't mean you can't hire talent. Low budget movies don't have to be sexploitation flicks or have lots of gratuitous sex and nude scenes either. And above all, it doesn't mean if big production companies aren't involved that your movie isn't worth viewing. Low budget films can be something totally different, and that is exactly what "With You" proves.However, all of this also means that it is a lot harder to convince people to look at your movie. So, in order to prevent your movie from ending up in the bargain bins, you have to come up with something interesting. And in the case of Jason Christensen's movie, this is just an honest, basic & simple plot. Don't expect lots of special effects; don't hope to see gallons of blood, instead, what you do get is much better. Think tales of the unexpected or old Twilight Zone episodes and your expectations will be pretty close to what you'll find.
The movie builds and reminds me of all those excellent Asian horror flicks from the past ten-years or so, where horror is more a matter of atmosphere then shocking FX. It gets you in the right mood and lets you in on the characters.Jim Polk (portrayed by Joe O'Rourke) is done with big City life & his 9-5 job. He contacts an old buddy of his who lives in the small, rural town of Mt. Prospect. Jim decides he has nothing to lose & quits his daily job to move to there. From here on, director Jason Christensen takes his time to get us into the right mood & help us feel what Jim feels as he arrives in this remote area.
The house he rents, the new job he takes, the people he meets, are all part of the "new life" Jim seeks in Mt. Prospect. A life, which is totally different than, the one Jim left behind. I truly do miss some background in his character and maybe a secondary storyline where his girlfriend dumped him would have been a nice addition to give his character more body.
Arriving in Mt. Prospect, the first thing Jim does is inspect his new home. It is a small-town farmhouse ideal for starting his life over. The house is very simple with no special features except for the fact that his bedroom window is facing Moloch Manor, an old mansion that's supposedly haunted by the ghost of Amon Moloch, a man who was killed in there many years ago.
While settling in, his buddy Sloan comes over to pay him a visit and welcome him to the neighborhood. Though not much background information is given about most of the characters, the extra time left is ideal to absorb the strange air that hangs in Mt. Prospect. Mike Pish (as Sloan) is a very lively character in this movie and plays well against the more serious Jim Polk. Sloan has lived in Mt. Prospect his entire life and has his own candy shop. But above all, he takes the haunted house stuff seriously. Even when Jim asks him about it, he refuses to go into detail.
One of the tricks of a good movie is using a limited cast (4 or 5 main actors) and making sure that nobody figures it out during the film. This keeps the story interesting and helps minimize the low-budget feel. And, it certainly works for "With You" by adding the supporting roles of Fred Schutz as Mr. Klein (Jim's new boss) and Laurence Skorniak as the creepy, old gravedigger, Mr. Mercant. Also important to the movie is Danny Burke who takes on the role of Bill Marshall, an understated protagonist.If Joe O'Rourke & Mike Pish are relative newcomers, then one can say that both Fred Schutz & Laurence Skorniak are kind of veterans. Although most of their credits go to stage work in and around Chicago, both their faces looks like they have been on film for years.
Both Mr. Klein and Mr. Mercant know what's going on in Mt. Prospect, but their fear of the ever-lurking evil is too great to talk about. So, it's up to Jim to put all the pieces together and make sense of the strange things he experiences. Dead people who tried to escape their graves, noises coming from an empty house next door to him, an infestation of spiders, strange accidents (including an attack on his friend Sloan), and a strange fluid discovered in his bedroom are only some of things he has to deal with. Without giving away the movie's ending, I can tell you that "With You" does have a surprising twist that I didn't see coming."With You" was shot in just nine days, with one camera and on a very low budget, but you can't tell by watching the finished product. Jason Christensen wrote, directed and produced the whole thing and if that's not enough, he even worked on the sound effects & the colour correction. It was Christensen's goal to provide us with a good alternative to all the slasher films we have on screen these days, and with this classic ghost story, he surely did.
more info on :
http://www.withyoumovie.com