You can’t help but feel sorry for Sasha (Monroe Cline, Teardrop, Skincare) as the opening of When It Rains in LA unfolds. She comes across her sugar daddy Nate (Eric Roberts, From Dusk Till Bong, Runaway Train) sprawled out dead on the living room floor of their Italian villa. It seems that the shock of receiving The Mask of the Rain God and divorce papers alongside his morning coffee was simply too much for his heart.
Wishing for a change, Sasha heads back to L.A. to catch up with old buddies Tatia (Natasha Stricklin, Bitches Giving Stitches, Painted Horses), Mark (Felix Merback, The Seductress from Hell, Blood Star), Alice (Taylor Brianna, Do You Say What You Mean?, Fingers in the Wind), Leese (Paris Simone). This should serve as a distraction, or so she thinks.
Finding a suitable man won’t be a problem for Sasha’s busy schedule. Meet Harry (Tom Gipson, Hollow’s Ridge, The Man with My Husband’s Face), the sweet-talking pilot of her flight. He is so smitten that he leaves the cockpit during the flight just so he can flirt with her. If that wasn’t already too good to be true, he also shows up after they land to offer her a ride and save her from waiting in the rain. His timing really cannot get better than this or can it?
Also onboard that flight are William (Mike Ferguson, Showdown at the Grand, Alien Vampire Busters) and Anna (Leslie Stratton, Truth or Dare, The Clean Up Crew) who, by coincidence, have the mask Nate got before he died. They appear, almost immediately looking suspicious, their intentions far from noble. Perhaps they are behind the disturbing phone calls Sasha and her friends begin receiving. It’s a question the movie poses, but one they ignore for the majority of its runtime.
Sasha and her friends do not need their payphones touched. It is already complicated enough dealing with threats coming from unstable Mark, whom they inexplicably tolerate. Describe the reasoning behind such character decisions. Unfortunately, those sorts of plot holes go ignored until the end, when director David M. Parks (Static Codes, Heart for the Holidays) and writer John Sillup stick them into the airless-breathing-suspense-in-a-can conclusion.
In fact, it is a multi-tiered setting with characters that any capable writer ought to want to work with. But alas, not quite. Sillup and Parks squander Mark’s chaotic potential on unfocused drama (made worse by Addie and her friends’ annoying antagonistic traits). The film practically begs to be put out of its misery, only to flop its arms around diffusing what little sense of cohesion it has left.
It’s only after about fifty minutes that When It Rains in LA decides to remember that it had marketed itself as a horror film, waving a massive knife around in the process. Several people, most of whom die off-screen for reasons that, upon learning, we could neither guess nor figure out, perish. And the rain? The downpour has absolutely no relevance to any of this.
Technically, there are a few masked individuals stabbing folks, so I guess When It Rains in LA could be classified as a slasher, but it lacks the one feeling that counts: feeling like a slasher film. Rather, it comes across as a poorly executed drama that turned into a half-hearted murder spree at the end to sell the movie as a horror flick. Not a single effort is made to create real suspense, tension, or fear. And when the killers are unmasked, there is no shock whatsoever.
If the script had been edited to cut some of the needless fighting and developed the horror aspects earlier, it could have succeeded more as a home invasion thriller. But the filmmakers seemed more focused on presenting the characters relaxing at a nightclub watching some singer named Fais, whose career had peaked in the Netherlands some years back. To each their own, but for those with different tastes, it may soften the experience.
In terms of the striking aspects of the movie, the best part would be the cinematography. Preston Weaver’s work has always been with Parks and with Bitches Giving Stitches getting a lot of work as a cinematographer made, and with the city of Los Angeles and its nightlife, he certainly delivered. The way the city lights up at night is nothing short of spectacular, and this film makes it seem like they had a bigger budget to work with than what I presume they had.
When It Rains in LA tries to be two things at once a drama and a horror film and fails horrifically at both. I had high expectations due to the publicity, which painted the film as an intriguing blend of dark fantasy. If the imagination that was supposedly poured into the writing had actually been applied to the script, I wouldn’t be writing this review. Unfortunately, what the audience gets is a disjointed potpourri of poorly executed soap opera melodrama coupled with halfhearted horror clichés.
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