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Film Review: 'Unsullied' is creepy debut for Simeon Rice

I look up at the heavens every once in a while and ask: When will we see the end of this interminable deluge of movies about psycho serial-killer rapist creeps stalking, hunting, and victimizing scantily clad, weeping, screaming, pleading women?

Murray Gray plays a track star mourning the disappearance of her sister in “Unsullied.” She runs into some bad company in the backwoods of Florida and must escape in a race for her life.
Murray Gray plays a track star mourning the disappearance of her sister in “Unsullied.” She runs into some bad company in the backwoods of Florida and must escape in a race for her life.Read more
    by By Tirdad Derakhshani, Inquirer Staff Writer
    Published 

I look up at the heavens every once in a while and ask: When will we see the end of this interminable deluge of movies about psycho serial-killer rapist creeps stalking, hunting, and victimizing scantily clad, weeping, screaming, pleading women?

The subgenre has produced a few classics such as Psycho, I Spit on Your Grave, and Baise-moi, but many, many more duds. That includes Unsullied, the feature debut from NFL defensive end-turned-filmmaker Simeon Rice.

Drafted in 1996 by the Arizona Cardinals, Rice, 41, played pro ball for 12 years before turning his attention to the entertainment industry, first as a hip-hop record producer. In 2009, he graduated from film school.

Rice's film is a low-budget, low-concept psychological thriller about a Tampa, Fla., track star abducted by a pair of wealthy playboys, who force her to play the prey in a deadly hunt through the Florida woods and swamplands. Despite its gruesome, tiresome premise, it's directed with a confident hand and boasts stylish photography and editing.

Newcomer Murray Gray stars as Reagan Farrow, a talented competitive runner who interrupts her preparations for a forthcoming race to mourn her sister Kim (Nicole Paris Williams), missing for some time and presumed dead.

Rice uses extended flashbacks - sentimental scenes of the sisters as young girls being generally adorable - to establish Reagan's refusal to move on. It's tired material.

Things get moving when Reagan runs into our bad guys while she's passing through a desolate rural area straight out of Deliverance. A pair of really sweet, charming, hot guys, Noah Evans (Rusty Joiner) and Mason Hicks (James Gaudioso), seem like every young woman's dream boyfriend.

Alas, they are anything but sweet. Seems the boys, who have made a killing on Wall Street, come to town every year for a hunting vacation. The fun and games begin when they take Reagan back to their comfortable, well-appointed, psycho-killer-rapist lair.

Reagan escapes while the boys are busy raping a diner waitress (Malone Thomas) they had kidnapped earlier.

The rest of the film is as predictable as it gets.

Unsullied was made by a director with real promise. It's a shame Rice picked this turkey to shoot as his first

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