I'm guessing some people would see this banned from it's title alone but it's worth a look passed the "P" word before those people find themselves too outraged. This film was rated at 7.7 when I first found the page today - I'm guessing as sometimes happens the cast, crew and their moms all sign in and hit the 9* rating at first then the voting settles to a more realistic level.

For a first film attempt on what seems to be minimal budget this wasn't too bad. I can't decide if employing a title like they did was part of a promotional gimmick to get the film some attention - which of of course works a treat in our current, media frenzy era over this subject - or if they truly wanted to touch on a topic many larger film outfits would run a mile from. Apparently the two lead characters penned most of the script and it does a fair job of covering some of the basic issues that would be encountered in a situation where a male had been accused of underage sex with his girlfriend and the fallout post-jail.

Read basic as meaning just that - the film's script doesn't reveal the complexities and depth of the issue to any real degree - it seems instead they left it to the acting and long, mostly silent scenes following 'Echo' around to do that job for them. How well it achieves that result I'm unsure. Some of the scenes and effects worked well but there was constant over use and over emphasis of the shaky hand-camera viewpoint - shakes and scene blur movement when you just didn't need and and really didn't want it - I felt like turning away for a break on occasions. On top of that there were some bizarre choices of music... everything from rave beats to a long scene with a minimalist discordant piano.

I gave this 5 out of 10. I'd loved to have given it higher for a couple of young, new actors daring to tackle the topic on zero budget. However for me it didn't work - there's way too much made of the aimless (supposedly aimed at atmosphere and character empathy I guess) wondering around scenes when that time could have far better been spent highlighting the complexities of what can go wrong within the framework of a possible wrong conviction for underage sexual assault. If you want an informed take on the social/media treatment of this issue - check out Chris Morris's infamous Brass Eye TV series on it. -