Rid of Me

What Rid of Me was supposed to be was a film about a woman who is trying to figure out who she is, what it ends up being is an indie film trying to figure out what it is. There did not seem to be any clear focus on what the film wanted to accomplish and in the end it did not accomplish much. Rid of Me is grossly unpolished as it is far easier to name the things wrong with the film (acting, editing, dialog, plot, production quality) than the things that worked (I cannot think of any).

Meris Canfield (Katie O’Grady) and Mitch Canfield (John Keyser) are a newlywed couple who are about to relocate to Oregon. Upon their arrival to their new apartment they are surprised as they walk in with all of Mitch’s old friends. Meris has never met any of these friends before and not all that excited to meet them either. You can tell the unexpected surprise was unwelcomed when Meris fumbles around her words and all that she can say without conviction is, “It’s great to finally meet you guys.”

Being a newcomer to a close knit group can be tough but Meris does not ever really seem to try all that hard to fit in with the wives of the group. From the very beginning she showed no real effort so it makes its hard to feel bad for her. In her defense his group of friends are not very warm to her and are pretty awful individuals anyways.

Each time the group gets together she isolates herself further and further away from them. As sort of a last ditch effort she turns to wine to help her fit in socially. But instead she spills embracing private information in front of everyone after having too much wine.

The final blow is when Mitch’s ex-girlfriend shows up at a party that sparks an old flame between the two. Meris and Mitch’s relationship is shaky and we have to pretend that we care enough though we never saw them really connect much anyways. From the very beginning I questioned how strong their relationship was.

The dialog felt forced the entire film and the sloppy acting by everyone did not help matters either. Every scene felt contrived and exaggerated beyond belief. This made it very uncomfortable and difficult to watch Rid of Me.

When the production quality is this poor you then have to rely other areas such as filmmaking to step up. Unfortunately, the filmmaking was just as bad. Quick zooms can be effective when done properly (see a Duplass brother film) but in Rid of Me it was noticeably off and unnecessary especially when combined with comically awful piano notes.

You cannot say Rid of Me fell flat because it never left the ground to begin with. It is filled with so many clichés and stereotypes that it makes you cringe and roll your eyes as it fails to provide any originality. Nothing between the opening and ending credits captured my interest. The hard part about the film is watching it, the second is figuring out what it did right. I would stay far away from this film.