Review of All I Need

All I Need (2016)
6/10
Director Made Best of a Bad Situation...
13 December 2020
"All I Need" is a slightly schizophrenic film. It seems to have two conflicting threads, but that turns out to be due to a behind the scenes issue.

The main part of the film concerns Chloe, played by Caitlin Stasey. She wakes up bound and gagged in a house with a group of other girls. They are apparently being held there by some weird costumed guy who is killing them. Most of the film concerns Chloe desperately trying to escape and not fall victim to this creep.

The other thread involves an unemployed shlep, Andrew, played by Markus Taylor. Andrew has serious financial issues and begins to get offers for some sort of job. We assume that eventually, these two threads will meet. But do they, and how...

Well, the answer is "sort of" and "not very well." But from the DVD, we learn that the film encountered a real issue. The first 2/3 of the film was Chloe in the house, and then the rest of the film would follow her story. But when they filmed, they took a Christmas break, and Stasey booked a role in the CW's "The Crown" and never came back to finish the film. So the director was stuck with a little less than 2/3 of a movie that seemed to stop in the middle of things and no way to film an ending because the lead actress had left.

So they thought fast and added the unrelated thread to try to get to where they would have gotten to. Because of that, I am giving it a higher rating than I normally would have; because the issues with the film are due to necessity rather than a director thinking, "This is what I wanted to do."
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