Political Theater
FOUNDERS DAY
2023/15/107m
“Change is here.”
Director/Writer: Erik Bloomquist / Writer: Carson Bloomquist / Cast: Naomi Grace, William Russ, Devin Druid, Olivia Nikkanen, Amy Hargreaves, Jayce Bartok, Andrew Stewart-Jones, Erik Bloomquist, Adam Weppler, Emilia McCarthy, Catherine Curtin, Tyler James White, Kate Edmonds, Dylan Slade.
Body Count: 9
In 2014, someone sent me a concept trailer for Founders Day and a link to their Facebook. Assume it was someone from the production, but as time went by, I never heard about the film and wondered if it just failed to garner funding or summat… In a tale of persistence, the film finally came out almost a decade later – and got a theatrical release! Mild spoilers follow.
The cutesy small town of Fairwood is embroiled in an embittered mayoral election between incumbent Blair Gladwell, and ‘time for change’ rival Harold Faulkner, who is hellbent on family image, to the point of almost alienating his teenage kids. One night, his daughter Melissa is slain in front of her girlfriend Allison, by a Founder-masked, robe-clad out-of-the-box wacko, who beats her to death with a gavel before tossing her body off a bridge.
Politics, however, waits for no one, and the campaigning continues with various accusations tossed around, which are complicated when Gladwell’s daughter becomes the next victim. At each murder scene, excerpts of nursery rhymes are left on sheets and walls. Further victims with no real connection to either candidates are dispatched and bereaved Allison assumes a sort-of final girl role, stumbling across murder scenes, being chased by the loon, and investigating suspects, which range from teen love rivals, to stoic political aides, and the requisite inspiring teacher (Russ, who rocks a sort of Hal Holbrook thing and is probably the most interesting of the characters).
Founders Day is a nice looking film, but a confusing one. A large roster of characters ensures that we either learn little about them, or they disappear for extended periods of time. By the end, once motivations and rationale have been communicated, I had to watch the scene over again to comprehend what I was being told.
Speaking of the killer, the unmasking moment was a surprise I didn’t predict, and the film does us the courtesy of some flashbacks to show ‘how they did it’, albeit seemingly missing one crucial detail mentioned earlier that is left unexplained. The killer’s reasoning also may require a little more knowledge about town-level American politics than I have.
An interesting idea, certainly taking a different path than most, but the result is rather incoherent and suffers, not from pacing issues per se (though it runs almost two hours), but bouncing all over the place like a pinball, never stopping long enough to get to grips with much and leaving waaay too many unanswered questions in its wake. Good soundtrack though.
Blurb-of-interest: William Russ was in Cruising.