I was a bit wary when Bystanders started, understandably. It was a debut feature from director Mary Beth McAndrews. It was also the debut feature of writer Jamie Alvey. And, more worryingly, Alvey had one of the main roles onscreen. Okay, none of these things needed to be viewed as red flags, but we all know that they can be. I had no need to worry though. Bystanders is a wild ride, although I can understand why some might be put off by the mixture of real darkness and entertaining glee.
Things start with a horrible bit of abuse. Some young women are drugged and sexually assaulted by a group of young men. The women are then told to run away, given a head start before the men hunt them down and kill them. Abby (Brandi Botkin) is one of these escaping women, but she has the good fortune to bump into Gray (Garrett Murphy) and Clare (Alvey), a loving couple who will go out of their way to cause great pain and harm to abusive men. Men like Cody (Bob Wilcox) and his friends.
Alvey may not get things quite right with handling some of the subject matter here, but she certainly settles into a more satisfying rhythm when mining the dark comedy of the premise (which is, essentially, all about tables being turned and predators becoming prey). Selfishly or not, she allows the best exchanges to occur between herself and Murphy, but there are decent snippets of dialogue shared around the rest of the cast members.
McAndrews directs well enough to distract from some of the obvious shortcomings. While this is obviously a fairly low-budget feature, it's presented with enough care given to the sound and picture that you don't spend much of the runtime complaining about being unable to make out precisely what is happening. The occasional edit and shot composition falls a bit short of the mark, but overall I'd have to give McAndrews due credit in what she has been able to do with quite limited resources.
The cast also help by doing decent work throughout. Botkin is someone you want to see make it through to the end credits, Wilcox and his posse are those you want to see NOT making it (or, at the very least, not making it there in one piece), and both Murphy and Alvey are a whole lot of fun for almost every minute that they're onscreen.
It feels indebted to numerous other films without hitting you over the head with homages and winks, there's a commentary on the pervasiveness and complicity of abusers who often face little, or even no, consequences in society, and the third act is extremely satisfying as major scumbags get their comeuppance. That opening sequence is a tough moment to get past though, and it may prove to be too much for some, or may prove to be an insurmountable obstacle when the film then starts to thread the dark comedy running through the rest of it. Consider yourself suitably warned, although I hope more people are able to enjoy it as much as I did.
7/10
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