Inexchange (2006)

Directed by Zach Parker [Other horror films: Proxy (2013)]

I barely knew anything about Inexchange before watching it, but the little I did know pulled me in immediately.

See, this low-budget film was made at Ball State University, a university in Muncie, Indiana, and more importantly, where I went to college. The first scene of the movie shows the statue Beneficence, which is right across from the Student Center (and diagonally across from Elliott Hall, where I dormed for two years). Later in the movie, there’s a scene near Frog Baby, outside Bracken Library. I couldn’t tell which dorms they used to film in, but I did noticed a scene in the Teacher’s College, where I had a handful of classes.

This personal connection doesn’t necessarily make the movie better, but it does lend a very relatable feeling to it. It helps that the movie follows an awkward student as he’s bullied and mocked, only for him to get his revenge by making a deal with a mysterious, supernatural figure (who looked quite a bit like Candyman, as he wore the same type of coat). I was never bullied in college, but I did feel out of place (as described in my review of Last Night in Soho), and I felt for Sean Blodgett’s character.

Sean Blodgett made for a pretty solid lead. He got the awkward personality down fantastically, and it was nice to see his budding relationship with Tiffany Marie Wilson’s character (despite it not going exactly how he wanted). Wilson, for her part, played her role pretty well, and seemed a decently likable character. Both Todd Richard Lewis and Bradley J. Gunter did great at playing a pair of bullying dicks, and Andrew W. Burt shined as the mysterious blindfolded figure.

The ending wasn’t anything surprising, but what was surprising, and pleasantly so, was the score throughout, which had a dark, occasionally ambient, vibe to it. Not only was the music solid, but toward the end, there was a pretty good use of editing, showing someone having intimate relations for the first time and, at the same moment, a guy getting tied up with barbed wire and splashed with corrosive acid. Overall, the gore here isn’t the focus so much as the psychological issues that Sean Blodgett’s character goes through, but there are a few scenes here that were good.

I can’t say that Inexchange is that special a film, but the fact it was filmed largely at Ball State does make it a more interesting one for me, and while the story’s not exactly what I’d call original, it’s still a decently-made film for the budget they had. It’s not special, but even so, I didn’t have a bad time at all with this one.

7/10