"Beneath the Leaves" seeks to unite two narrative strands related to abused children. One strand focuses on two Bly kids who set their house ablaze with their alcoholic, abusive father inside. The second strand concerns four boys who were held captive in a mine shaft by a psychopath, prior to their daring escape. Years later, after another fire, the psycho escapes from prison and starts stalking the four boys who are now grown men.

First, the entire premise of the film is an unpleasant, unwholesome, and extremely depressing topic. Second, the filmmakers fail to connect the two plot strands except for one detail that links the little boy involved in the Bly home fire to the psychopath Whitley in hot pursuit of the four grown men, Josh, Brian, Matt, and Georgie. SPOILER ALERT: For those viewers interested in the minute plot detail the solves the riddle of messy narrative, here it is: apple harvest. END SPOILER ALERT.

The slow pacing only adds more misery for the film viewer, who was expecting a film that featured the outstanding performers Mira Sorvino and her father Paul. Mira's detective wears a fashionable hat while on the job, and the hat is more interesting than her character. Big Paul plays the hapless chief of police who has as much trouble controlling his wacky police office as he does in tracking down the villain. For most of the film, the chief is sitting at his desk.

This film demonstrates why any work of cinema must start with a screenplay that develops both action and characters in a coherent way. In the case of "Beneath the Leaves," the action was far-fetched and the characters uniformly unlikable.

The story opens up with two children setting fire to their abusive father in Julian, California. Years later, the son, James Whitley (Doug Jones) escapes from prison in a fire. We then discover the back story that Whitley had kidnapped four foster children and ripped their fingernails out. It appears he is coming after the boys as adults. One is Detective Brian Larson (Kristoffer Polaha) who is pulled off the case. His partner Erica (Mira Sorvino) gets to stay on the case.

The story moved slow. The way they built the story was tedious. You tried to piece it together, for no good reason. The cute ending was nice, but it needed to be more entertaining to get there.

Guide: F-word. sex. brief partial nudity.

Greetings again from the darkness. It doesn't happen often, so it's probably kind of fun for them when a father and daughter are able to appear in the same film. This is writer-director Adam Marino's first feature film, and he cast Paul Sorvino and Mira Sorvino not as father-daughter, but as Police Captain and Detective. The script, co-written by Marino, Naman Barsoon, Daniel Wallner, and Mark Andrew Wilson treads familiar, yet usually interesting ground ... a crime topic covered previously by numerous TV shows and movies.

The film opens with an abusive father (Don Swayze) doing despicable things to his young son and daughter, before the two of them take action against him. We then flash forward to a prison escape that occurred after a fire is set. One of the escapees is an especially demented psychopath with a trait that ties the story back into the opening sequence. What follows is a whodunit police procedural that focuses on Detective Erica Shotwell (Oscar winner Ms. Sorvino) and the four boys who survived their encounter with the twisted prison escapee some 15 years ago. Doug Jones plays James Whitley, the prison escapee returning to finish the job on the 4 that got away. Mr. Jones is best known for his fabulous "creature" work in THE SHAPE OF WATER and PAN'S LABRYNTH.

The four boys, now grown men, are played by Ser'Darius Blain, Christopher Backus, Christopher Masterson, and Kristopher Polaha, the latter of which is now Detective Shotwell's partner ... though, against his vociferous protests, is prohibited by the Chief from working the case that he is oh-so-close to. Also providing support work are Melora Walters, Jena Sims, and fingernails in general. Director Marino's film is mostly B-level material, and actually much milder than what we see on many TV shows these days. It does, however, reinforce the notion that screwed up kids quite frequently grow into screwed up adults.