Review: Heartbeat

Director Gregory Hatanaka
Guion: Nicole D' Angelo, Chris Spinelli, and Gregory Hatanaka

Year: 2020

A series of killings take place after a reporter published a story. These murders get increasingly closer to her, and she starts to think that her life is in danger.

Where to begin with this movie? Only a few minutes had to go by to understand the sort of film I have gotten myself into. The opening scene presents a teenager who becomes the first victim we see of the killer, the antagonist of this story. Only this scene is enough to expose the grave problems this movie has.

The first sign of the bad quality of "Heartbeat" is the acting. The opening scene showcases this problem that extends through every actor in this movie. The acting is simply terrible and makes the already uninteresting story harder to get through. The actors are unable to present exciting characters, and we don't even care about their outcome.

The next problem resides in how the attacks and killings by the villain are presented. In most cases, we see the attacks from the perspective of the killer, which seems like a good idea at first, until we see the poor execution of the scenes, accompanied by the bad acting. On top of that, the makeup effects make no sense with what is shown and don't look right.

The plot on the script from Nicole D’ Angelo (“Acrylic”), Chris Spinelli (“Choke”) and Gregory Hatanaka (“Samurai Cop 2: Deadly Vengeance”), the first two who are also the protagonists and the last the director, is plagued of hokes and nonsense. Not even by having three writers, they manage to make the plot interesting and keep the viewers’ attention past the first 10 minutes. The plot lacks tension, and its twists are predictable from early on, subtracting from any sort of surprise these moments may have.

All in all, "Heartbeat" fails in everything it proposes. Its plot is not interesting, the acting is terrible, and the visual effects are of poor quality. At no time does it feel tense and even less horrific, in part for the hole-plagued plot, and by how little interesting the characters are. Just the opening scene is enough to understand the sort of movie this is, and from here, everything gets worse.