No Good Deeds

THRILL and SUSPENSE are the major effects used in the movie trailer for the up and coming thriller No Good Deeds a movie scheduled to release September 14, 2014. The movie is somewhat a clichéd depiction of an escaped African American murderer who slips into the house of an African American woman and proceeds to torment and hold hostage the woman and her child. The idea of opening the door for strange men or helping out strangers and then being deceived and ending up in trouble is seen many times in movies and therefor upon first hearing about the movie I had already made the decision to wait for the Netflix upload. However, when I found out that the antagonist of the story line would be played by Idris Elba I immediately became interested and almost ready to buy early seats for the premier. If you do not know who Idris Elba is allow me to give you an overview of his work. In Daddy’s Little Girls, Elba plays the good father who wants nothing but custody of his 3 girls from their mother and step father who run a drug ring, but his income places strain on the process, in the end he saves the girls and the town loves him. As the wealthy loving movie husband of Beyoncé Knowles, Obsessed, he is such a great man that his secretary falls in love with him and tries to kill wife just to be given the privilege of love by Mr. Wonderful. This Christmas a movie power pact with some of the most famous African American actors of the early 2000, Elba was the some may say, favorite son of the mother who broke her heart when he decided to become a traveling, musician, this was one of the most worst things he has ever done as a character in any movie. I am so excited that the proclaimed good boy is about to go bad and be the antagonistic murderer, Colin. His CO-Star Taraji P. Henson however seem to play the same type cast character of a mother figure with an attitude, warranted in this movie by the fact that she is being chased around her house by a stranger whom she was only trying to help. These two people are very recognizable and the trailer uses their level of celebrity to appeal to people like me who like these two actors.

            When I finally got through the trailer I felt a little differently towards the movie. Throughout the scenes shown in the trailer the actors chase each other around this large house in the dark. It almost seems like the movie might be two people playing hide and seek with weapons. It does not seem to be a lot of scene changes. All the scenes involving Elba seems to be almost black with shadows and you have to squint to even make out some of the things happening before you randomly see a knife or gun flash through the scene then vanish almost foreshadowing the idea that someone will die. When it comes to the Family dynamic of the daughter in a scene there is more color and light. “… it make sense to consider what colors are compatible with the kinds of arguments you’re making” (Luther 453) happiness has a bright color connotation but the next scene being dark has a negative connotation.

 

 We see Colin playing with the Daughter but you never see her again… did he kill her? We see them get stopped by a police officer outside the house…. Did he get caught? The directors did a good job of leaving you wondering what the outcome of these and the other people who came in contact is. I am not very excited to watch grown people chase each other around but the trailer did make me wonder who will be alive when the credits roll. This trailer appeals to the ethos and pathos of our deepest fears in humanity. It is not ethically reasonable for someone to infiltrate our homes and take over if that person is that powerful or we fear the repercussions of not doing what that person orders us to, however it happens every day to people. In Everything is an Argument we are told “… authority is a measure of how much command a writer has over a subject, credibility speaks to a writers honesty, respect for an audience, and its values, and plain old likeability” that being said the idea that the author has taken the comfort of a home and a mother and victimized them in our eyes we respect him and think he probably had a mother, who cared and would not let anything happen to him and that why he could make the mother so personable to the audience. Emotionally we see a mother trying to protect her child from a man and we feel for her because she doesn’t even know that this man in her house is a murderer. The audience will be at the edge of their seats when we try to figure out what happens to this mother and daughter in hostage.

            This movie is effective in appealing to the types of audiences who like movies that are almost life like. Scary movies that have a hint of reality in them unlike your horror and gruesome Scream and Insidious style movies. I give this trailer three out of five pickles, I could do without the numerous scenes of running around but it evoked a lot of thoughts just in relation to the people surrounding the intense and what happens to them not only the main characters. Can't wait until September 12th I'm sold!