By: Lana K. Wilson-Combs
Australian actress
Lily Sullivan ("Evil Dead Rise") holds her own giving a tense and captivating performance in the sci-fi thriller,
"Monolith."
Sullivan is one to watch. In fact, she's actually the only one to watch on screen in this creepy one-woman drama from director
Matt Veseley ("Aftertaste") and screenwriter
Lucy Campbell (“Aftertaste”).
In "Monolith," Sullivan plays a former journalist who was fired from a newspaper after she failed to do thorough research on one of her stories. Readers of the publication weren't thrilled about the false accusations surrounding it.
The Interviewer--as Sullivan is referred to in the movie--hasn't been completely able to shake off the shame of the incident. Her father (Erik Thomson, TV's "Black Snow") tries to reassure her that this too shall pass while she's staying at her parent's very nice home while they are away on vacation.
She's still very much a journalist at heart. She even sets up a recording studio at the house and starts a podcast called Beyond Believable. Her first broadcast is based on a tip she received from a maid named Floramae (voice of Ling Cooper Tang, TV's "Troppo").
Floramae explains to the interviewer that she mysteriously got a black brick and it somehow had powers that upended her life. The story catches the attention of some listeners who call in and claim they also had a black brick and have a story to tell about it too. It doesn't take long before the little interviewer's podcast is the hottest show around. The caller's stories are all similar. The brick has symbolic images on it and weird things begin to happen to them when they had it.
Like Floramae, many of them are reluctant and afraid to go into detail about this brick.
Our interviewer has a lot of questions she wants answered like did they try to get rid of it? Is this just some crazy hoax that people are taken part in for attention? Initially, it seems that way until the interviewer reaches out to a German art dealer named Klaus (Terence Crawford, "The Stranger") and a British reporter (Brigid Zengeni, TV's "Prosper"). They believe there may be more to this mysterious artifact and even an international cover-up.
Will the interviewer dig deeper and take some personal risks to get the real scoop and story? Will she maintain journalistic standards in the process? Or, in her haste to reclaim some of her former glory will she fall prey to what got her canned from her first job?
"Monolith" is a nifty, low-budget thriller that takes viewers on a nail-biting ride. Lily Sullivan is the driving force here and pulls off the entire unnerving movie with such aplomb.
Editor's Note: Be sure to catch my N2Entertainment.net movie talk segment on the Kitty O'Neal Show Fridays now at 5:17 p.m. and 6:47 p.m. on radio station KFBK 93.1 FM and 1530 AM.
Look At This Trailer For
"MONOLITH"
Lana K. Wilson-Combs is a member of the Broadcast Film Critics Association (BFCA), The American Film Institute (AFI), and a Nominating Committee Voting Member for the NAACP Image Awards.
