Dollar Tree Cinema: High Voltage

“High Voltage” (2018)
Starring David Arquette, Allie Gonino, Ryan Donowho, Luke Wilson
Written and directed by Alex Keledjian
Not rated, but R levels of profanity, some gruesome images and one unnecessary but mostly clothed sex scene

The last thing I expected when I purchased “High Voltage” at Dollar Tree because of its odd-sounding plot and heavy promotion of Luke Wilson and David Arquette on the cover was to have to do actual research while writing about it, but here we are.

It came out of nowhere. I'm watching this movie that opens with a sultry singer with short black hair performing a song called “Dead Like Me,” interspersed with scenes of a similar-looking but blond young woman meeting up with a guy in a restroom. She leaves him dead in a stall, his face burned, and we get into the movie proper, with Arquette narrating as one-hit wonder Jimmy Cline about how he got a second chance at the spotlight.

Songwriter Scott (Donowho) and his pal/drummer/personal documentarian Zach (Erik Stocklin) crash Jimmy's birthday party,* but Scott assures the bemused guest of honor he's actually there for a girl. He points to Rachel (Gonino), a friend of Jimmy's daughter Chloe, who clearly doesn't know him, but starts vocalizing angelically when Scott begins to strum his guitar. Naturally, Jimmy decides they should start a band.

Also finding this a bit odd are Scott's wife Carrie (Elizabeth Rice) and Rachel's mother Barb (Perrey Reeves). Rachel's a natural talent from a singing standpoint but not much of a performer, despite Barb being the worst kind of cliched stage mom. When the band, performing under the name Hollow Body,** takes the stage for a gig lined up by the son of the owner of the record label that produced Jimmy's one hit (Wilson), she freezes.

Jimmy's ticked, Scott's trying to stick up for her, Zach's just kind of there, and Barb is pulling the plug, taking her daughter home despite this being presumably her best shot at at least moderate fame and/or fortune. They don't get far though, as lightning strikes their car.

As a kid, I remember my mom telling me a car is actually one of the safest places to be in a storm because if lightning strikes the vehicle, the people inside would be OK. The IMDb goofs section backs this up, but I checked it out with the National Weather Service too: “Contrary to popular belief, the vehicle's rubber tires DO NOT 'insulate' you from the lightning. The vehicle's metal shell conducts the lightning around and away from you.”

I also thought lightning generally only struck the tallest objects, but according to the Insurance Information Institute, that's a myth. As we go on with this movie, you'll see the location of the strike is the least unbelievable thing about it, but nevertheless, it bothered me.

Spoilers follow.

Anyway, Rachel and her mom die, except Rachel wakes back up – we're told much later in the movie she was technically dead for three hours – and is soon back to do another gig with the band. Chloe (Bekka Walker) is encouraging her to make the most of her second chance by drinking a lot and making out with a random dude... the dude killed in the bathroom at the start of the movie. This time we get some more details, namely Rachel shocking the guy when they first kiss. He doesn't learn his lesson and lets her push him into the stall, where there are more flashes and she leaves his smoldering corpse. Her eyes are glowing too.

I picked this as a horror movie, but this girl had herself a super villain origin!

Rachel gives Scott, Jimmy, Zach and some dude in a hat playing the bass notes for a new song she scribbled down on a napkin or paper towel and does some metaphorical smoldering of her own on stage. Afterward, she collapses outside and seems very confused about what transpired.

Jimmy narrates and Scott tells us she's acting more and more erratic, but we don't see much of it. She does book their next gig, a wedding where she's making out with someone in the “Just Married” car and leaves him toasty and dead.

Back at Jimmy's place, she enters with the money from the gig, throws up in an ice bucket, throws herself at Scott and, when he rejects her, starts doing cocaine. Scott storms out and Zach follows because no one else likes him. Rachel offers Jimmy coke, then shocks him, literally and figuratively, by licking his neck.

Scott doesn't hear from his bandmates for a couple weeks but reaches the last straw with Carrie by playing a song he's writing at 4 a.m. She's mad he woke the baby but throws him out when she figures out the song is about him missing Rachel.

Next, we see Scott at Jimmy's place where Jimmy plays him a song he recorded the night before. Scott is surprised because Jimmy hadn't been able to sing since being stabbed in jail during the Clinton administration, information that seems important enough that we should have heard about it before immediately prior to that scene. Apparently, it was thanks to Rachel's kiss. One minute she seems normal, the next she's day drinking straight from the bottle and, oh yeah, quoting her mom a lot. Hmmmm...

Somewhere off camera, Rick listens to their new, electrified-Rachel music and decides to sign them. But Jimmy figures the only way to make sure he promotes the album is to give him some one-on-one time with Rachel. She's cool with it, not mincing any words. After a near kiss and full-on grabbing of Scott's crotch, she heads upstairs with Rick and flash fries him.

When Scott confronts her, we get confirmation that her body is now inhabited by the spirit of her mother and she's the one being all aggressive and electrocuting dudes to, I don't know, boost her energy or something. Rachel tells her to get out and she seemingly does, as evidenced by her and Scott kissing and then doing more. Then she does zap him with her lips or tongue, snaps a selfie of them together and walks off, laughing at being called “Rachel.”

Jimmy narrates that he told Rick's dad his son died of a heart attack, which has also been the alleged cause of death for Rachel's other victims, despite, you know, their faces being melted. So Rick's dad sets up a benefit concert for heart disease, and Hollow Body is on the bill. Rachel enters with her black hair and fishnets from the opening sequence and surprises Scott by convincing Carrie to come to the show with their baby.

In her dressing room, Rachel asks Carrie to take her picture and intentionally leaves the selfie of her with Scott on the screen. When Carrie confronts her, Rachel plants a lethal kiss on her, because nothing's edgier than having women kiss to make something else happen in a movie.

Scott senses something is wrong but reluctantly heads out on stage with the band, where... they die.

We don't see this, just a photo of the event, where Jimmy explains they're all dead, although Rachel's body was never found. He muses about everything that happened and whether it was worth it for a last shot at fame, and we see his house has been converted into the Hollow Body Museum. A line of dialogue and evil laughter after the credits suggest Rachel/Barb survived. I got an assist from IMDb on that because I couldn't understand what was said. This movie, like “Sharkman” before it, had no option for closed captioning, and, as my oldest daughter has teased me, I can't hear without my subtitles.

The only extra to speak of on the DVD is a commentary, which I'm honestly kind of curious about since not only did Keledjian write and direct the film – his only directorial effort, according to IMDb – but he also wrote the songs. This guy was fully invested in the movie and somehow managed to get Arquette and Wilson on board, the former in a much larger role than I expected.

But listening to that commentary would also require watching the movie again, and I'm not sure I want to do that, at least not anytime soon.

Arquette is entertaining enough and tries to make Jimmy a little more than just David Arquette. Gonino shows range, going from shy songstress to tantalizing temptress and confused prisoner in her own body.

The movie focuses a lot on the band stuff, as well as Scott's marriage which, to be fair, could be interesting. But it's just over 90 minutes long, and I really feel like there needed to be more electric succubus stuff. Maybe Keledjian wanted the grounded material in there to flesh out the horror aspect. That's a good idea, but the “real” stuff feels forced and the supernatural feels like an afterthought. I did think at one point this could have worked as a streaming series, to allow more room for everything. It also could have benefited from a writers room, rather than one voice with ambition and ideas that weren't matched by the execution.

Perhaps we could have also gotten a tagline that made sense, because I'm not sure who is attempting to get revenge on who.

* - The third time he's celebrated turning 50.

** - Also, I'm guessing, the original title of the movie, given that the words appear for a fraction of a second before and after “High Voltage” in the credits.