Low budget releases are invariably a hit and miss exercise, with the miss side having the more prevalent showing, however there have been some half decent releases lately, and this one sounded just up my street! Directed by Peter Spears, who is better known for TV work and has episodes of ER, CSI, Young Indiana Jones, Quantum leap etc, and styled after some fairly well known works like ‘After Hours’ and ‘The Big Empty’, this is a low budget affair, but sometimes simple is best……right?

Wiley Roth (played by Giuseppe Andrews), is a bored Los Angeles Bookshop worker, who one night finds a severed finger on his kitchen floor. Completely thrown by this he tries to enlist his friend and somewhat zany father to help him find the owner of said digit. His search takes him across the city, and in a half flashback scene shift, the story unfolds of various events and characters including oddball neighbours, a useless TV psychic, listless cops, smugglers and a nine fingered woman named Cheryl. Cue an offbeat and quite amusing in a low key sort of way of boy meets girl and loses finger, boy gets paranoid, girl gets violent, boy loses girl, finger turns up…and so on.

The plot is quite good, I found myself smirking a few times as the film progressed and not really knowing what might happen next. This is low budget so there are no big special effects, big names or big capers, but it does amble along nicely and ties all the loose ends up so that there is no questions unanswered. The film is shot in straight scenes, there is no adventurous panning or camera shake, which has blighted some low budget efforts.

6.0/10, A filler rather than a main event, but something in it to please most people, not madcap, but offbeat and nicely done. If you are a bit of a movie buff, this one is low key comedy that is well worth the ninety minutes.