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In our modern era of movie trailer editing, it’s pretty common to know exactly what a movie is about, how it will begin, and how it will end all within the couple minutes of footage the studio chooses to show. As if in mortal terror of people not getting it, they play a slick highlight reel of everything worth seeing set to whatever 90’s song is stuck in the editor’s head at the moment. With text blocks and snippets of dialogue that lay out the entire plot, watching a trailer is like having a friend who recounts every single detail of a film to you until you feel like you’ve seen it.
I sat through the trailer to Molly’s Game three times, and I have to remind myself every morning when I wake up that I’ve never seen the entire movie. Watching the trailer for Loophole three times has made me feel the opposite way. Each time I feel like I understand the movie less.
Let’s take a moment to see if we can put it together.
Okay, so clearly someone discovered a gene that they think can determine who will and won’t commit murder, and the government’s testing people, and one girl is caught in the middle of all this. So far so good. But then, nuns in what I think is the ancient past also know of this gene, and this girl is a key to something as one man atonally yells “YOUR LIFE IS THE ONLY ONE THAT MATTERS” to highlight the gravity of her situation. There’s a shot of the crucified Jesus, so maybe the gene is a sign of divinity? But then there’s super white trash Satan knocking shit around. Does he have the gene? If so, then does the gene accurately determine who murderers are? Is this girl trying to make sure people get tested? There’s suddenly this divine battle between good and evil in an Apocalypse Rising sort of way, and I have no idea where this killer-gene plot falls between. I guess what I’m trying to say is that my interest is piqued.
I also have no idea what the title means. Is the gene a loophole to murdering people? Did they find a loophole around it and are trying to cure it? Is the girl a loophole around the murder gene? It certainly doesn’t get me excited as a title like Death Gene or The Murderer in My Blood would.
Also worth noting is that the cover art (in the gallery below for your viewing pleasure) is doing us no favors here. It looks like the kind of art you would find on either a Discovery documentary on human anatomy or an Attack on Titan movie. Either way, it doesn’t exactly scream killer-DNA horror movie. What we need is one of those covers with a lady posing in a slutty American Pyscho costume gripping a knife while posed in front of clouds but with hellfire on the bottom, and she’s got this smile on her blood-smeared face that says, “Murder is the only makeup I need!” One of the DNA strands in the blood on her face is glowing. Then, you can pat your hands clean, because everyone will instantly know what this movie is about. I sure know I do!
Loophole comes to VOD on January 8, 2019.
