At its heart, Fall Down Dead has the makings of an entertaining low-budget thriller with decent direction by Jon Keeyes (American Nightmare), a cast with a few familiar faces, and competent make-up effects; but that's all pushed aside due to the script by Roy Sallows which has its characters doing too many stupid, implausible things and has too many scenes of characters nervously sneaking around in the dark holding a gun in front of them. It also doesn't help matter much that the premise, and much of what happens, is not only rather dull but clichéd at the best of times.

For proof of how by-the-book things are, you only need to look at our opening scene where a woman walking through a parking garage chatting on her cell phone finds herself being chased by a shadowy figure before ending up slashed-up when trying to escape on an elevator. It turns out to be the handiwork of the "Picasso Killer" (Udo Kier) who has been going around town carving symbols into and mutilating various women in order to use pieces of them in the morbid artwork that litters his apartment.

Into the picture comes single-mom waitress Christie (Dominique Swain), who has to work on Christmas Eve and kicks the "dumbass character" festivities off early when, after getting assaulted by a homeless guy, decides to walk down a dark alleyway. Which, I suppose, is necessary so she can stumble across our killer just finishing off with his latest victim leading to her fleeing to a nearby office building where she ends-up becoming trapped with a crotchety security guard (David Carradine), two office workers there late having an affair, and the two detectives that responded to her call. And as if it's not enough there's a killer loose, they also have to contend with a blackout.

It's probably an alright idea to confine the action to such a small space as is gives Kier's murderer the chance to stalk people through the blackened hallways but the filmmakers really don't do a heck of a lot with their setting as there's plenty of scenes of our cast members talking a load of nonsense before splitting apart in the dark to become the latest victim. Sallow's script also seems to randomly make people pop out of the woodwork (such as the maid character) to be added to the body count when he deems it necessary. And let's talk about the body count. Even though Fall Down Dead does have a couple of moments sporting decent effects work, most of the killings occur off-screen giving the film a distinct lack of suspense. It's hard to get tense when, most of the time, people are just stumbling across Picasso's handiwork well after the fact. I'm going to mostly blame this on the feeling I got that they only really hired Kier for a couple of days work as he seems woefully underused and is given little background - it's like the producers wanted to stack their film with recognizable names with little regard for much else.

This is the second recent film I've seen with Swain in the lead (the other being the miserable Evil Dead-wannabe, Dead Mary) where she's made absolutely no impression on me. It seems like her only claim to fame is starring in Adrian Lyne's Lolita remake and little else. Mehmet Gunsur, as Italian detective Stefan, also doesn't have much impact. Hell, even Kier and Carradine are pretty "meh" with only Karine Darrah showing any spunk as our promiscuous/bitch office worker, Yanci.

Fall Down Dead is a complete misfire that doesn't do a lot right. It doesn't use its setting or situations nearly well enough, the cast seems to be going through the motions, and (as said before) Sallows screenplay just plain sucks. I'm going to assume this was simply a "make work" job for director Keeyes as he's certainly better than what's on display here. There's probably a reason this sat on the shelf for three years before getting limited release in 2009. If you want to see a similar premise done correctly check out the 1978 thriller Blackout starring James Mitchum and Robert Carradine. (Chris Hartley, 1/10/10)

Directed By: Jon Keeyes.
Written By: Roy Sallows.

Starring: Dominique Swain, Mehmet Gunsur, Udo Kier, David Carradine.