Robert Hall was a special effects technician for the Angel and Buffy The Vampire Slayer television shows, so it's interesting that the main character in his directorial debut, Lightning Bug, would be an aspiring special effects technician himself. He also wrote and co-produced the film, lending even more weight to it's personal slant.

Lightning Bug tells the story of Green Graves (Bret Harrison), a teenager who moved from Detroit to Alabama at a young age with his mother, Jenny (Ashley Laurence of the Hellraiser films). Since they moved they've fallen upon hard times and Jenny has married an abusive alcoholic man named Earl (Kevin Gage). Green is a long time monster movie fan and he spends all of his spare time and all of his spare money working on latex applications and make up effects in his room and watching as many horror movies as he can.

One day, when out to rent a movie, he meets Angevin Duvet (Laura Prepon of That 70s Show) and the two hit it off. They start dating and soon fall fast in love but things are about to get more complicated just as they start looking up for poor Green. His work at the local haunted house, which he hopes will serve as the portfolio work he needs to get a shot at taking on Hollywood, has got him in some hot water with the local religious right, which just so happens to be lead by Angevin's mother (Shannon Eubanks) who may or may not be in complete control of her faculties. To make matters worse, Earl's drinking is getting out of control and he's starting to get physical with Green. While all of this is going on, Green's younger brother Jay (Lucas Till) is burying himself in the local church not because he's truly seeking salvation but because he doesn't really know what else to do.

When the local church is vandalized, all signs point to Green as the culprit responsible for it and when Angevin's mother gives false testimony to the police (the deputy is played by Hal Sparks) that she saw him do it, Green finds himself in jail. His two friends, Billy Martin (George Faughnan) and Tony Bennett (Jonathon Spencer), help get him out but once they do, he's in for a rough time. His family life is going to fall apart and his relationship with Angevin is going to be pressed to the limit. Green is going to have to make some very important decisions, whether he likes it or not.

Lightning Bug was a mixed bag for me. The acting is all pretty good (with Harrison, Prepon, Gage and Laurence really standing out) and quite believable, and the direction is tight and professional. The cinematography is also quite good and it does a nice job of capturing the slightly backwards feel of the rural community that the film unfolds in. The premise of the story is a good one and likely one that many of us who felt ostracized by our family members or our peers in our youth can probably relate to easily enough. Green's character is easy to have sympathy for and the obvious autobiographical elements that the film lays on the table make for some compelling drama and interesting twists.

With that in mind, some of the subplots really could have been developed better (without spoiling the ending I'll just say that nothing is really resolved with Jay's character despite a fairly heavy build up towards it) and the music didn't help the film. I know plenty of people like Bob Dylan-style folk music, but Kevin Kinney's original songs did absolutely nothing for me except to pull me out of the film every time I heard them. Of course, like anything, musical appreciation is completely subjective so this factor may not irritate some as it did me, but I had trouble taking certain parts of the film seriously when the vocals kicked in.

Taking a look at the cover art and given the fact that Anchor Bay, the DVD's distributor, is often associated with, it's easy to miscalculate and figure that this film is a horror movie or thriller, and it's definitely not. If you go in with those expectations you'll likely be disappointed as although there are one or two moments of tension, the rest of the film does unfold at a much more languid pace than your typical scary movie does. While Lightning Bug does deal with the darker side of human nature to a certain extent, the emphasis is on how its character will overcome his obstacles, not succumb to them or turn to violence. Not that there's anything wrong with this, there isn't at all, but it would be easy to look at the cover art and assume you're getting something completely different than what you're expecting.

In the end, for a directorial debut, Lightning Bug gets a lot of things right. The flaws are there and they're hard to overlook but Hall knows how to coach good performances out of his actors and he knows how to pace a film and make it look good. Big things could be in store for the director, being that he's only know in his early thirties and this film could very well serve as a stepping stone for him as well as for some of the performers (most of whom are mainly television stars) to make the jump into more feature work.

Video:

Anchor Bay's 1.771. anamorphic widescreen transfer of Lightning Bug is solid indeed. The colors look nice and vibrant, the black levels stay strong and dark throughout, and there is virtually no print damage at all on the image. Mpeg compression artifacts are never once a problem and edge enhancement, while present in a couple of spots here and there, is kept firmly in place. Film grain never gets too heavy and there's a pretty revelatory level of detail in both the foreground and the background of the image. Some minor line shimmering is present in a few scenes, but it's never too serious. Overall, the movie looks great.