FREEZE FRAME

Year: 2004
UK: Verve Pictures
Cast: Lee Evans, Rachael Stirling, Sean McGinley, Ian McNeice, Colin Salmon
Director: John Simpson
Country: UK
UK: 98 mins
UK Certificate: 15 contains strong violence and language
UK Release Date: 18 June 2004


Synopsis

Traumatised by his arrest and near conviction for a series of brutal murders, Sean Veil (Lee Evans) has become a true paranoid. Convinced that sinister figures led by a criminal profiler are determined to fit him up, he has spent the ten years since his acquittal video-taping his every waking and sleeping moment so he'll have a rock-solid alibi if he's ever accused of another crime. But the one tape that could prove his innocence of a new murder mysteriously disappears and he's forced to go on the run to fabricate the evidence of the missing hours...

A conceptually original and visually distinctive contemporary thriller, FREEZE FRAME is the feature film debut of writer/director John Simpson and stars Lee Evans (MOUSE HUNT; THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY; THE FIFTH ELEMENT; FUNNY BONES). Currently on stage in 'Endgame', and soon to star in THE PRODUCERS, Evans plays Sean Veil in a genuinely career-changing performance. Winner of the coveted Perrier Award at the Edinburgh Festival in 1993, Lee is one of Britain's best-loved and most talented comedians. In FREEZE FRAME, he makes the transition that proves that his talent extends far beyond the confines of comedy. The film is produced by Michael Casey and features a score by award winning composer Debbie Wiseman.

Creatively and technically ambitious, the film's production values belie its low-budget origins. Having arrived at the idea of a character whose paranoia lay not in the fear that he might be being filmed, but rather in the fear that a second of his life might go unfilmed, John Simpson pushed the available technology to the absolute limits. To make the character's strategy of defensive self-surveillance a genuinely visceral experience for the viewer, John incorporated Hi-Definition cameras, DV-cam, mini DV, Digi-Beta, Beta-SP, Super 8 Film, VHS and 35mm still-photography into the shoot. The result is a truly unique, fast-paced and absorbing thriller with a deep and disturbing resonance for the paranoid world in which we currently find ourselves.