Film:  Suspension http://www.easy-action.com/suspension

Studio:    Easy Action Pictures

Principal actors:  Scott Cordes, Annie Tedesco

Directors:  Alec Joler and Ethan Shaftel

Screening Date:  September 19, 2007 Kansas International Film Festival (work in progress; not in competition)

Film length:  95 minutes

Rating:  unrated 

4 stars 

Reviewer:  Deborah Ground Buckner

In an instant, Daniel Bennett's (Scott Cordes) life is changed forever.  One moment, he is driving with his wife beside him and his teen-aged son in the backseat playing with a video camera.  The next, a traffic accident kills his wife and son and the driver of the other vehicle.  Daniel wakes in a hospital with a doctor breaking the news to him about his family. 

There is another shattered life as well, that of Sarah (Annie Tedesco), a young teacher whose husband also died in the accident.  Seeing her, Daniel walks away from an insurance lawsuit that would have forced a sale of her home to cover her husband's liability. 

Daniel returns to his empty house and examines his son's video camera that survived the crash with a last tape showing the family together.  He watches those recorded moments, longing to go back, to stop time in that instant before the accident.  When he presses the “pause” button, he discovers the camera has a strange power, the ability to stop time, freezing the rest of world while he continues to move freely. 

Daniel learns this power can be used in many ways, such as stopping the world and picking the pockets of frozen shoppers in a store.  Along with this power, his obsession for Sarah grows.  Each time the “pause” button is pushed, Sarah is aware of a strange feeling, often followed by her collapse when time begins to move again.   

The combination of power and obsession leads to a thrilling and horrifying series of events as Daniel becomes more and more involved in Sarah's life.  Both actors give riveting performances.  Scott Cordes manages to elicit pity for Daniel despite his actions while Annie Tedesco registers Sarah's downward spiral as she experiences events beyond her control. 

The screenplay by Aris Blevins is tight and suspenseful, and the score adds to the excitement.  This is a first feature film for co-directors Ethan Shaftel and Alec Joler, whose first project together was a seventh grade class film about Armenia.  Filmed in Lawrence, Topeka, and Kansas City, Kansas, this project and its youthful production team received great enthusiasm at the Kansas International Film Festival.  They will continue to fine-tune their work and, hopefully, find a distributor in the future.  They have much to be proud of in this first feature.