An adventure set in the late ’80s, a psychiatrist leads his junkie older brother towards the Canadian border to escape a murder charge.
“The Shade Shepherd” offers up a tale of two brothers moving along very different paths. Set in 1987, Jack Ables (Jordon Hodges) runs an apparently successful psychiatric practice though he seems oddly distracted, even checked-out. More’s the pity because his wife Stacey (Caroline Newton) is due soon with their first child and needs him to be present.
Jack’s wayward brother Pike (Randy Spence) lives in a small, rundown motor home, and is also checked-out, though on a whole other level. Pike is entirely self-destructive, nurturing his crack addiction and passing out at the end of every day. On the way to dreamland, Pike revisits his accumulated angst for reasons that are not clear. The downward spiral is obvious to Jack, but he confides to Stacey that he feels powerless to save either his patients or his brother from their descent into oblivion.
Things get worse when Pike learns from a radio broadcast that he is suspected of murder the night before, the result of a bar fight. Since Pike can’t remember a thing, he has no reason to doubt the account. Coming to the rescue, Jack dutifully spirits Pike into the wilderness in an attempt to get across the Canadian border, safely out of jurisdiction.
The theme of love for a wayward brother permeates the production. As Pike goes through painful withdrawals from drug use in an abandoned, dilapidated house in the woods, Jack can only sit helplessly in the other room and listen to the wailing and vomiting.
In order for a character study like this to work, the film must be populated by compelling, fleshed-out individuals. Despite gamely efforts by Hodges and Spence to breathe life into their on-screen personas, they still manage to come up a bit short.
A suitably urgent score does a nice job of heightening the drama. Unfortunately, too much motion by the hand-held camera operator fails to do likewise and constantly reminds viewers of the modest budget.
Directed by Chris Faulisi, and written by Hodges and Faulisi, “The Shade Shepherd” presents an offbeat tale of paranoia littered with repetitive rabbit holes. Audiences wondering where this journey of discovery will go wait far too long to find out. Perhaps ironically, the opening credits constitute the most elaborate element of the production design, thus setting the stage for a noble endeavor that never quite fulfills its promise.
Now available on Digital HD and DVD
