From Eva, with Love

Review by James McDonald A grief stricken Russian Girl will stop at nothing to avenge her mother’s death caused by a greedy Pharmaceutical CEO’s quest to maximize his company’s profits. ***SPOILERS AHEAD*** Don’t read any further if you don’t want to know the ending of the movie. I love short independent films. If executed correctly, they will have effectively told their story in a run time of under thirty minutes or less, as is the case with “From Eva with Love.” I can’t count the number of times I’ve reviewed a movie that was over two hours long which could have been successfully trimmed down to thirty minutes and accomplished the exact same objective. “From Eva, with Love” begins with Stan (Marc Jeffreys), the CEO of a large Pharmaceutical company who suffers from Agoraphobia and is confined to his home. He informs his son Philip (Nick Seidel), much to his surprise, that he has ordered and paid for a Russian mail order bride, Eva (Callisto Griffith) and because of his fear of being out in public, asks him to go and pick her up. When she arrives at Stan’s home, which is cluttered in an assortment of unnecessary household accouterments, he introduces himself as her new husband and informs her that he is trying to clean his house but because of a heart condition, for which he must ingest daily cardiac medication, he needs her help in doing so. Shortly after, he wines and dines her, dances romantically with her on the back patio and they make mad passionate love together. During the night however, while trying to maintain his libido, Eva inadvertently giggles at which point Stan turns into a raging monster and starts beating her and exclaims that she’ll never laugh at him again. He shouts and yells at her on a daily basis to finish cleaning the house with barely any down time. During a quiet moment, Eva has a flashback to her hospitalized mother back in Russia, who died as a direct result of the doctors not being able to acquire the appropriate medication from the U.S. Apparently, it was Stan himself, who decided to stop shipping all pharmaceutical medicine overseas so he could save money. One evening, after having fallen asleep in front of the TV, Stan suddenly wakes up in severe pain and begins frantically searching for his heart pills. As the pain worsens and his physical demeanor weakens, Eva appears, standing over him, and informs him that she finished cleaning the house and put everything away, including his medication. He collapses onto the floor and his essence tortuously withdraws from his body, just like Eva’s mother. Director Norman Gregory McGuire delivers a well-crafted psychological thriller along with some authoritative performances by the film’s two leads, Marc Jeffreys and Callisto Griffith. Overall, this is the type of movie that is produced to show investors just how good the film could be as a feature-length presentation and if that is indeed the case, I will gladly welcome the opportunity to see some more story development and character exposition. Recommended.