Lucky (2004)

This movie is proof of two things:

A) Anyone can get a movie made these days

and

B) If you make a movie, no matter how bad, someone out there will see it and really like it.

A nine-day DV wonder that's been building some buzz in the horror community ever since it picked up a slew of awards in late '02, this flick's about an alcoholic cartoon writer who befriends a dog with telekinetic powers. There's a germ of an interesting idea here -- role reversal of the traditional man-dog relationship, with the dog as master and the man as servant -- but it's squandered in an overwritten, underthought no-budget snoozer that drowns itself in superfluous voiceover narration (to the point where it seems that the screenwriter should have just converted this into a short story and been done with it). The opening narration hints towards a rubber-reality movie that the subsequent film occasionally nods towards but never has the guts to become. It's all of marginal interest as a boundary-pushing black comedy; too bad it's a complete and total failure as a horror film or a psycho-thriller. Are indie-horror fanatics really this easy to please?

Grade: C-