‘Take Me’ flails between farce and thriller
The makings of a workable quirky black comedy are held hostage by tone-deaf execution in the case of “Take Me,” which stars Pat Healy in his directorial debut as a purveyor of simulated high-stakes abductions.
Having just relocated his business — Kidnap Solutions LLC — from Atlantic City to Los Angeles, Healy’s Ray Moody is having trouble getting a bank loan for a service that’s a hybrid of immersive theater and alternative therapy.
He’s thrown a lifeline in the form of a call from one Anna St. Blair (Taylor Schilling of “Orange Is the New Black”), a marketing consultant who offers him a handsome sum in return for making her disappear for the weekend, but the arrangement inevitably turns into a decidedly wobbly game of cat and mouse.
Outfitted with a terrible toupee that is practically a character unto itself, Healy is never able to find an absorbing middle ground in Mike Makowsky’s script, vacillating gratingly between shrill farce and murky thriller that flails its way toward an intended twist-ending that really shouldn’t surprise anyone.
The Jay and Mark Duplass production continually squanders the opportunity to mine hints of the more darkly disturbing motivations and subtexts behind the oddball conceit, settling instead on a bickering pair of unlikable characters who come across as bogus as those faux kidnappings.
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‘Take Me’
Not rated
Running time: 1 hour, 25 minutes
Playing: Laemmle Monica Film Center, Santa Monica; also on VOD
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