Impossible Crime review: A police detective gets more than he bargained for when he starts to investigate a string of impossible murders.
Impossible Crimes
A police detective with a tragic past leads Impossible Crimes, a film that has several layers to it. Lorenzo (Federico Bal) is investigating a series of strange murders that may somehow be connected. He and his partner are struggling to connect the dots when young nun Caterina (Sofía Del Tuffo) arrives at the station and confesses to the crimes. She claims that an evil force has possessed her and is using her body as a vessel to carry out the unspeakable acts. At first Lorenzo brushes off her claims, but then things start to get strange and he finds himself reassessing everything he has ever known.
Directed by Hernán Findling, Impossible Crimes is all at once a tale of demonic possession complete with menacing nuns – which seems to be the in-thing at the moment – and intellectual, philosophical science fiction. They make for strange bedfellows and ones that don’t entirely mix together that well. It’s true that were the film to have settled on just one of the ideas, that I would likely be lamenting how generic and bland the story is, but there’s still just something a little off with this pairing. There are some great, almost Final Destination style moments, with the death sequences, the manner and reason that people are being hunted down, and I can’t help but feel that if these concepts had been tapped into more then the film would be stronger.
The whole production, plot and otherwise, looks and feels like an episode of The Outer Limits, and in many ways this idea would be perfect for such a television show. It’s a story made to be told across a shorter space of time, and when stretched to feature-length, the film fails to fully command the viewer’s full attention. An interesting concept poorly realised, Impossible Crimes has great potential, but sadly never quite achieves it.
Impossible Crimes was reviewed at Arrow Video Frightfest 2019.
