Review: LOW LIFE, Stalking a Predator on a Night From Hell

Working from a script by Hunter Milano -- who plays one of the best friends -- and Noah Rotter, Tyler Michael James makes his feature directorial debut with a film that becomes progressively more tightly paced, and even breathless, coiling up scattered narrative moments into a sustained night of suspense. The subject matter also, as it happens, critically deconstructs a major trope of superhero and other action movies of the blockbuster era, namely, what's so great or praiseworthy about being a vigilante?

Consider those thematic toppings to be icing on the cake of a film that begins as a cultural opinion piece about the unpleasant ills of social-media stardom before morphing into an even more caustic drama about the limits of friendship. Low Lifethrobs with energy; it's not always pleasant to watch, but it is continually gripping.